


The Last Five Years

by Thekeyandquill



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Clint Barton & Kate Bishop Friendship, Fix-It, Insomnia, M/M, Minor Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Minor Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Minor Wanda Maximoff/Vision, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Self-Harm, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-11-05 16:05:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 71,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17922026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thekeyandquill/pseuds/Thekeyandquill
Summary: Tony Stark has spent the last six months trying to find a way to bring back those lost in The Snap, but when he succeeds and Peter Parker and the rest of the lost Avengers return he discovers that it has been a little bit longer for them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [The Last Five Years](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21138260) by [HelenFromRussia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelenFromRussia/pseuds/HelenFromRussia)



> This story is mostly canon-compliant up to the end of Avengers: Infinity War with the one big difference that Peter is 18 at the beginning of the movie instead of 15/16. Just assume that in the roughly three years that I insert between Spider-Man: Homecoming and Infinity War things have been fairly quiet on the super villain front and Tony took a more active role in mentoring and training Peter after Homecoming. Enjoy!

After the mad Titan has been put to death by Thor and the mighty axe Stormbreaker, after the Infinity Stones have been slowly, painfully destroyed, after the theories have been hammered out and the calculations have been checked and re-checked, after every bolt has been welded and every wire exactingly placed, after the switch is finally thrown on the machine that will restore the missing half of the universe, Tony knows he will have to go in search of Peter Parker.

He has the Quinjet – modified by now for interstellar traveled – prepared and supplies laid by so he can leave after it is finally done. He knows that these six months of struggle after the snap were just the beginning. He’ll go to Titan first, he thinks, and if Peter isn’t there he will fling himself across the universe until he finds the boy and brings him home.

The feeling of Peter dissolving into so much dust in his arms both horrifies and drives him. He’ll see the job through. He’ll do it right. He won’t fail the kid again.

He gives Bruce a nod as he types in the final calculations. The team is gathered in the lab in the heart of Wakanda, where they made their final stand. The Avengers reunited in this one goal, all other grievances forgotten.

Cap and Nat are in the corner of the lab with serious faces on, whispering secrets to one another. Clint is standing vigilant guard in the rafters. Thor and Banner are conferring about something over at the bank of computers while Shuri makes some final adjustments to the equipment.

It feels good, almost. It feels like family. But with half of the family missing, and some destined to never return. He forces himself to smile and put on his rallying the troops face. _I’m coming, kid._  He thinks. _I’m coming._

“Alright, party people,” Tony says, clapping his hands together to get everyone’s attention. “Moment of truth is here. If this works, we did it. We saved the fucking universe.”

“Tony …” Cap protests, but he says it without much conviction.

“Ok. So, any objections, speak now, yada yada …” Tony continues, barely pausing. “Didn’t think so. Aright, Brucie, baby, you wanna flip that switch?”

Bruce gives him a smirk, his glasses slipping down his nose.

“I think you should do the honors, Tone. It’s your theory.”

 “Can we get on with this?” Shuri asks, wiping her nose and leaving glossy a streak of motor oil. “We’ve waited long enough.”

Tony snaps in her direction.

“Right you are, your majesty,” he says, walking over toward the bank of monitors, which also holds the switch to start the process. “Full disclosure, people, there is a small but non-negligible chance that we might meld with an alternate reality once I do this, so don’t go saying you weren’t warned if you come out on the other side with a prehensile tail or the ability to read minds or something.” 

“Non-negligible?” Natasha asks.

“Give or take 15 percent,” Tony says. “Peanuts, really. Alright, hold onto your butts ‘cause here we go!”

He flips the metal switch with a clang, barely giving himself time to think or hope or process. He’s thought this through. It has to work. It has to.

Then the air grows heavy and the copper tang of old pennies fills his mouth and the building is shaking as though it might rip apart. Or maybe it isn’t the building and instead the fabric of reality itself that is shaking. That would make more sense, really. Tony feels as though his very bones are going to vibrate apart and then it all stills just as suddenly as it started.

Tony looks around the room, searching immediately for an indication that it worked, that something is different now.  But there’s nothing. Everything in the lab looks exactly the same, every monitor and beaker and holoscreen exactly as it was before.

Except that there, in the far corner where huge windows overlook Wakanda’s vibranium heart, stands a wide-eyed, wild-haired Peter Parker. His gaze meets Tony’s and they just stare. It’s impossible. Tony is certain that this is one miracle too many. That he has to be hallucinating, or possibly dying.

But then.

“M-m-mr. Stark!” Peter stutters, then stumbles over his own feet, head tilting forward. He runs with fumbling steps, launching himself directly at Tony and clinging to his torso with his arms and legs. Tony instinctively grips him hard, arms wrapped around the boy’s waist. He’s shaking.

“Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark,” the kid keeps repeating like a mantra, his voice shaking and cracking around the words. “It worked. Mr. Stark, it worked. You’re here.”

“You’re damn straight, kid,” Tony says around a sob. He’s buried his face in Peter’s hair and is breathing in the smell of him. Pencil shavings and citrus and musk. “I’m here. I was always coming for you, and I am never letting you out of my sight again.”

“It worked,” Peter keeps repeating, tears running down his cheeks and soaking into Tony’s tattered AC-DC t-shirt. “It worked, Mr. Stark. It worked.”

Tony runs a soothing hand up and down Peter’s back. “I got you, kid,” he says. “I got you.”

He’s so focused on the feel of Peter, finally whole and solid in his arms that he barely notices the commotion around him. On the other side of the room Shuri is supporting her brother with her small frame. Steve has abandoned his usual stoic solider stance to whisper over a kneeling Bucky Barnes and somewhere, perhaps a few floors above them, someone is screaming bloody murder.

“I’m on it,” Tony hears Clint call as he flings himself down from the rafters. When he opens the lab doors, Tony can make out the words more clearly.

“Pietro!” someone is screaming. That would be Wanda back, then.

But none of that really matters because Peter Parker is home and whole and clinging to Tony as though his life depended on it. Until suddenly he isn’t because he’s slipping down Tony’s body, limbs limp and heavy, but still clinging with the sticky pads of his hands and feet to Tony’s clothing. 

Tony’s heart flips. The kid is losing consciousness.

“Stay with me, kid,” he implores as he lowers Peter to the ground. Then he’s calling out to Bruce, and a group of Wakandan doctors are there, and Peter is being wheeled out of the lab on a stretcher, but Tony won’t let go of him. He can’t. _Never again._  Tony thinks. _Never._

* 

Peter looks so small against the stark white of the recovery room. His face looks thinner, Tony thinks as he sits in an armchair next to the hospital bed, elbows on his knees, watching intently as a hologram monitor beeps steadily. The kid’s pulse is strong, at least. But his face is definitely thinner. All that baby fat that Tony remembers – the chubby cheeks and chin – are gone. Now his skin is pulled tight against his bones, making his cheekbones pop and bruised hollows form under his eyes. He looks older, somehow, but frailer than in that last horrible memory. _Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good …_

Apparently death takes a lot out of you. All of the returned Avengers and Guardians and various other heroes collapsed not long after their sudden reappearances. Those that showed up in Wakanda include the king himself, Wanda Maximoff, Bucky Barnes and Peter Quill and his coterie of alien weirdos including some sort of giant, anthropomorphic tree. Jesus, the universe is weird.

The news shows that the reappearances have been happening worldwide, and hospitals are being flooded with patients. The only person Tony’s been expecting to see who hasn’t shown up yet is Stephen Strange, the man who promised him there was a way forward out of this mess, and that he was the key. Tony hopes he’s Ok. He owes that guy a drink.

But for now, he can’t force himself to care about much besides the frail form curled up on the hospital bed in front of him. Bruce offered to spell him while he got some sleep, but he can’t fathom leaving. The only sounds in the room are Peter’s slightly labored breathing and the mechanical blips of the machines monitoring him. There’s technically not much wrong with him. Doctors are administering fluids because he seems malnourished and dehydrated, but other than that they say he may just need to sleep. And he does, but it’s fitful.

Even as Tony thinks about it, Peter’s breathing grows faster, his eyes moving rapidly under the thin skin of his lids as though he is having a nightmare. He gasps in a breath, and his eyes fly open wide.

“Mr. Stark!” he cries, reaching out as though to catch something. “Mr. Stark!”

Peter looks around the room, confused until Tony scoots forward and forcibly catches one of Peter’s hands in his own.

“Hey, kid, it’s ok,” he says, struggling to keep his voice firm and warm instead of broken and terrified like he feels inside. “I’m here. I’m right here. You’re back. You’re in Wakanda. You’re safe.”

Peter looks at him wildly. They’ve been going over this same script every couple of hours for the past 24 or so before Peter falls into another short, restless sleep.

This time, he tugs on Tony’s hand with the super strength that he so often forgets the kid has and pulls him into his arms, hands stroking over his back and arms as though assessing for damage. 

“It worked,” Peter says for the hundredth time, his voice no less relieved for the repetition. “You’re here.”

“Yeah, kid,” Tony confirms, gently. “I’m right here.  I’m not going anywhere. But you might wanna let me breathe here if you wanna keep it that way.”

Tony’s mostly exaggerating, but the kid has a grip on him. He’s capable of lifting a fucking bus with his bare hands, and he isn’t completely in control of that strength at the moment.

“Sorry,” Peter mutters into Tony’s chest. Maybe it’s Tony’s imagination, but he could swear that Peter sniffs him before he shuffles back in his bed and releases him.

Tony runs a protective hand through the kid’s hair. It seems longer than Tony remembers it, falling into his face in a way that is bound to drive all the high school girls crazy.

“Not complaining,” he assures Peter. “Why don’t you try to get a little more rest, kid? Clearly everything that’s happened has taken a lot out of you.”

The past 10 or so times they’ve done this, Peter has just nodded and curled in on himself before drifting off to sleep, but this time he straightens up.

“No, no, I’m fine,” he says, rubbing his eyes wearily. “I wasn’t taking care of myself at the end there, I guess. Everybody said. But I’m fine now. Really, I’m fine. It’s you I should be … You really are alright, aren’t you Mr. Stark?”

“Of course I am. Never better.”

Peter cracks a smile at last, a real, genuine, thousand-watt smile that makes Tony’s chest constrict in a painfully pleasant way.

“God, I, I should be asking you so many questions right now. I have so many questions. But somehow all that matters is that you’re here.”

“I know exactly how you feel, kid,” Tony says, taking Peter’s hand gently in his own. “It’s been a fucking long six months.”

And for some reason it’s that comment that dims Peter’s smile and furrows his brow.

“What do you mean, six months?” he says.

“I know, Pete,” Tony starts. He feels guilty about this part. It shouldn’t have taken this long for him to figure everything out. For Christ’s sake, Peter missed his own birthday. He’s 19 now, and he doesn’t even realize. “I’m so sorry. We worked as fast as we could, but it took longer than it should have to hit on the right theory. It took six months to get everything in working order. It’s October now.”

“What?” Peter says, the confusion plain in his face. “What do you mean theory? What do you mean months…? And I know it’s October …”

It takes him a few moments to finally get control over his expression, but after he does he’s reaching out to pet Tony’s arm comfortingly. It’s like he’s the grown-up trying to give Tony bad news.

“Mr. Stark, listen. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. It’s been a little bit longer than that. I tried. I really did, but it took nine months just to get back to Earth. Quill’s ship wasn’t exactly made for swift inter-galactic travel. It’s my fault, I know. You would have done it better, but I … It’s been five years, sir.”

Tony’s whole body goes cold. All of the blood in his body has been suddenly replaced with ice, because Peter is sitting in front of him and telling him something that absolutely cannot be true. Maybe he hit his head when he fell? Maybe the same juice that pulled him back into existence scrambled his brains, but something is wrong.

“Just … Let me call Bruce in here for a minute, ok, kid?” 

Peter nods, but he follows Tony’s motions with worried eyes like he’s the one who’s sick and should be lying down.

Tony pokes his head out of the recovery rooms and screams.

“Banner! Get your green-tinged ass in here now!”

Bruce comes careening down the hall, almost running into a wall and scattering papers in a flurry across the floor.

With a huff, he abandons them – a bunch of lab techs are already scurrying to help gather everything, anyway – and hurries down to where Tony stands.

“What? Is it a code?” 

“No, no.” Tony assures him, though he does not, himself, feel reassured. “It’s something else. “Pete’s a little scrambled, I think. I need you to come talk to him.”

“Just … Talk to him?”

Thirty minutes later, Bruce is wearing the same concerned face that Tony had previously been sporting and he’s pacing around the room, fingers twitching nervously.

“Ok,” Bruce says. “Tell me again.”

“I don’t …” Peter’s face is in his hands. Most of the blood has drained out of it, and all Tony wants to do is bundle him up in his arms and hold him close. “I don’t know what you expect me to say.”

“Just tell us what happened, kid,” Tony says, working hard to keep his tone steady. “From your perspective.”

Peter rolls his eyes, and Tony’s heart leaps a little in his chest. There’s my sassy kid, he thinks.

“We went to Titan,” Peter finally says. His voice is clipped. It’s the second time he’s been over his story, and he’s clearly already tired of it. Probably was tired of it before he began. “We crash landed the ship. We met up with the Guardians. We tried to stop Thanos. We failed because Peter Quill is a selfish shithead …”

“I feel like I should wash your mouth out …” Tony says. Really he’s trying to lighten the mood because Peter looks so exhausted and defeated, but he is having trouble getting used to the new vocabulary Peter seems to have returned with. Before this point he had cursed exactly once in Tony’s presence, after burning himself on a still-hot welding torch while working on his suit in Tony’s lab. He had blushed and stammered apologies for half and hour afterwards. It had been utterly adorable. 

“I’m 24. I’m allowed to call someone a shithead when they act like one,” Peter says.

“Ok, first of all …”

“Tony,” Bruce cuts in before he starts reminding Peter that he is, in fact, 19 instead of 24, because that gets to the heart of the problem they’re trying to solve, and seems like a bit of a sensitive topic for Peter. 

“Right,” Tony says. “Go on, kid.”

“Anyway,” Peter continues. “Quill was a shithead. We lost. Thanos left with the time stone and then a little while later people started disappearing. Turning to dust.”

Peter’s jaw clenches. He clearly doesn’t want to go over this part.

“Right,” Tony says. “And up to that point our stories are the same.”

“Who disappeared?” Bruce prompts, keeping his tone light and his voice low.

Peter pulls the sheet of the hospital bed up his body as though he’d like very much to hide under it.

“Do we really have to keep doing this?” he asks.

“Please, Pete,” Tony says.

Peter meets his gaze, big brown Bambi eyes unsurprisingly glossy with unshed tears. The look makes Tony feel like something is stabbing into his heart. It’s a physical pain.

“First it was Nebula. Big blue robot lady.”

“And then?” Tony prompts, unable to keep the waver from his voice.

“And then it was you, sir.” Peter barely manages to whisper. He’s looking straight at Tony, but his eyes are far, far away. When he speaks it’s like he’s retelling the plot of an old movie rather than telling a story about himself.

“After that the rest of us, we fixed up the Benatar, we headed back to Earth. Like I said, it took a while. When we got home we convened with the other Avengers – as many as were left – back in Wakanda, started work on a plan to bring everyone back and take out Thanos. It took … a while.”

“A while?” Bruce asks.

“It took us five years. Five years, seven months, twelve days and, roughly, three hours since the snap, to be as precise as possible.”

Peter stops talking, and Tony looks to Bruce, trying to gauge what he’s thinking. Bruce’s face is pinched and he’s hiding the bottom half of his face in his hands, elbows propped on his knees as he surveys the boy.

“Peter I want you to know that I am in no way questioning your perception of things,” Bruce says. “That’s not in question. But I need you to accept that it is currently October 12, 2018. It’s been five months and fourteen days since the snap.” 

“And I’m saying that you have to be confused because …” 

Bruce holds up a hand and moves to the corner of the room, where a television is hung unobtrusively. He flips it on and tunes it to CNN, where the anchor is running a report on the reappearances. Across the bottom of the screen is a news ticker that cycles through with headlines and the date: October 12, 2018.

“We aren’t really sure what’s possible with the Infinity Stones,” Tony pipes in, unable to help himself as Peter stares, shocked, at the TV screen.

“I don’t …”

“If I had to take a guess, I’d say you were operating in a dream realm,” Bruce is continuing. “Thanos had control over the reality stone, which may have created a false reality for those who disappeared. Time passing there would have virtually no relation to time here. It’s very conceivable that you…”

Tony can’t take his eyes off of Peter’s face, and he sees the panic rising in the kid. His breathing is going shallow and quick and his eyes are starting to brim over in tears.

“My things,” Peter says, interrupting Bruce. “Where are my things? My clothes, my, my everything …”

His voice is high and panicked and his breathing is only getting worse. Tony rushes over to a compartment in one wall, and pulls out a bundle of clothes – dark jeans, a novelty t-shirt (“You Matter, Unless you multiply yourself by the speed of light … Then you energy”) and a worn flannel shirt. These are all the things Peter was wearing when he reappeared suddenly in the lab.

“Pete, kid,” he says, placing one hand in what he hopes is a comforting gesture on the small of Peter’s back and putting the bundle in Peter’s lap. “It’s ok. Everything’s here.”

“I need …” the kid says, gasping through constrained tears and shaking away from Tony’s grasp. “I need some time alone, p-please.”

“Sure kid,” Tony says, trying not to feel the sting of Peter shying away from him. “Sure, whatever you need.”

He grabs Bruce by one elbow and hauls him out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

He’s crouched down in the hallway, tugging on his hair a moment later.

“That … might have gone better,” Bruce concedes.

“Ya think, big guy?”

“We probably should have expected something like this,” Bruce says. “Bringing people back from basically non-existence was bound to have some strange side-effects.”

Tony closes his eyes and breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth, but all he can see behind the lids of his eyes is the panic rising like an unstoppable tide in Peter’s face. The guilt is heavy on his chest. Logically he knows that even if Peter hadn’t climbed aboard that spaceship with him, he still would have disappeared. He’s gone over this with Bruce and the others before, been assured by numerous people that he isn’t responsible for Peter’s death. But none of that feels true.

What feels true is that Peter Parker was his to protect, and he failed miserably. Even in bringing him back from the dead he apparently did so much damage that the kid isn’t certain of his reality.

Tony’s used to fucking up. Really, he is. He fucked up with Ultron and almost brought about a genocide. He fucked up with Steve and he broke up the Avengers. He fucked up with Pepper and now she’s gone for good. But this feels like a step too far. If he fucks up Spider-Man, he’s not sure if he can live with himself.

So while Bruce moves on to check on the other patient, Tony waits in the hallway outside of Peter’s room and tries to come up with a way to fix things. He tries not to think that maybe no solution exists.

 

* 

Peter holds himself back just long enough for Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner to leave the room. He waits for the sound of the door closing and then he digs through the bundle of clothing Tony had laid on his lap and delves into the pockets of his jeans. _Where is it? Where is it?!?_

Then his hand meets cool metal and he pulls the palm-sized glowing metal canister from his pocket.

“Thank fuck,” Peter mutters against the metal surface, holding it close to his lips while his eyes flutter closed in relief. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a fake out. He has the physical proof of that other world in his hands, pulsing softly like a heartbeat with it’s internal reactions.

He doesn’t want to be, but suddenly he’s back there on Titan, breathing in the cold, dry air that tastes of dust already, even before Thanos.

_Mr. Stark is looking at him with a pained expression._

_“I don’t feel so good, kid.”_

_“Hold on, Sir. Hold on to me.”_

_Peter grasps him in his arms, supporting his upper body with all his spidey strength and hoping that if he holds on hard enough he can keep the man with him._

_“Don’t let me go kid,” Mr. Stark says with a shaking voice. “I-I don’t want to leave you.”_

_But they can both see the cracks already forming in his skin, his fingers and hands and forearms crumbling to dust._

_“No!” Peter lets out a strangled cry, eyes on Mr. Stark’s face as it, horribly, unforgettably, blows away on the wind._

_Over the keen of his own voice, whipping in the wind, he hears a soft metallic clunk. There, in the alien dirt, is the nano arc reactor that powered Mr. Stark’s suit. There’s no reason it should still be there. None of the rest of Mr. Stark’s armor is left, but somehow it is._

_Tears still clouding his eyes, Peter fumbles for the reactor, grasps it and pulls it close to his body, right over his heart. It’s maybe his imagination. It’s probably his imagination. But he swears he feels it give a little pulse, like a heartbeat answering his own. Peter doesn’t let it go all through the flight back to Earth. It’s the only way he can sleep in those first months, feeling that tiny mechanical heartbeat pressed to his chest. Who is he kidding? It’s still the only way he can sleep. Because a part of him believes the pulse of the reactor is Tony Stark’s heartbeat, and as long as it keeps churning, he’s still alive out there somewhere. And that means Peter can find a way to bring him back._

Peter breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth in time with the reactor’s pulse until he can stop shaking. Until he’s fully out of the memory. Peter keeps falling into that memory at inopportune times. It’s like reliving it, whenever it happens. He can’t always tell that it’s a memory and not happening in real time. Quill says it’s PTSD, his grandpa experienced something similar after he came back from Vietnam. Giving it a name never really made much of a difference to Peter. Naming a thing doesn’t necessarily give you power over it.

When he went with Quill and Wanda to fight Thanos, it had happened then. Wanda had walked up that lonely hill alone and sucked the life right out of the Titan. She had come back dragging that fucking gauntlet through the red dirt. And all the while Peter had stepped one foot on alien soil and reverted right back to that memory, useless and sobbing and clutching at the reactor like it was the only thing keeping him alive while Quill tried and failed to help him.

Wanda had been gentle, but firm with him, telling him to get up. They were going home and he was going to keep his promises. And he had.

“I did it,” Peter whispers into the empty hospital room. “I did it. It worked. They’re all back.”

The reactor is real and in his hands, and Tony Stark is right outside the door. Even if the television screen is telling him that he’s gone back in time five years and one of the smartest men he’s ever known thinks he’s been fucking dreaming a whole different life, Peter knows it all really happened. He can’t entertain the idea that he doesn’t know what’s real. He knows.

They put Peter in a hospital gown sometime after he collapsed, but they didn’t take off his web shooters, thank God. Tony built a pair of them into the suit, but Peter likes to have a pair on him. They’re made to look unobtrusive, like bracelets, made of leather and about the width of athletic wristbands.

Slowly, Peter slips a finger underneath one of the web shooters and feels the skin there, finding exactly what he expects and breaths out a sigh of relief. It happened. It really happened. All of it. But now he has to convince everyone else.

Peter realizes at that moment that he only has two options, and both of them are bad, bad options. He supposes he could wait for the others to wake up. Maybe in the face of all those corresponding stories Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner would relent, but even then, maybe not. _Shit._

Peter takes few more measured breaths, and then strips off his flimsy hospital gown and gets dressed. He feels more himself in his own clothes with the reactor safely tucked away in his pocket. It’s hard for him not to start fingering it, a nervous tick. He runs fingers through his hair to try to make it look presentable, but he’s certain it doesn’t work. And then he goes to the door and peaks outside. Mr. Stark is sitting in the hall right by his door, head tipped back against the wall.

Peter loses his breath staring at the long line of his neck, following it down to a firm chest, just a hint of chest hair peeking out from the collar the t-shirt he’s wearing. He’s been welding in it, even though he should wear a protective apron. Peter can see the tiny burn marks in the fabric where bits of hot metal have it. In the middle of his chest, visible through the thin fabric, the blue pyramid of the reactor – a twin to the one in Peter’s pocket – glows steadily.

He’s conjured up images like this so often in his head before that it seems unreal to have the living, breathing version in front of him. Peter has to steel himself not to reach out and touch. When he let’s his eyes wander back up to Mr. Stark’s face, the man is looking at him, brown eyes study his face intently. 

“You feeling any better, kid?”

“A little,” Peter says with a wan smile. “Can I talk to you alone, Mr. Stark?”

He reaches down to help the older man up, trying not to react at the feeling of his warm hand enveloping Peter’s own.

Mr. Stark follows him inside, settling back in the chair when Peter sits on the hospital bed. His legs feel weak when he contemplates what he’s about to do.

Peter stares down at his wrists instead of looking at Mr. Stark. He doesn’t think he can stand that. 

“I need you to believe me,” he says after a long, awkward silence. “I need you to believe that what I say happened really happened. I know this is all strange, but it isn’t any weirder than any other thing that has happened to us. I mean … Guys who dress up like vultures. Donut spaceships. Aliens who think Kevin Bacon is a defender of the galaxy …”

“Wizards with accessories that can destroy the universe?”

“Exactly!” Peter says, unable to help flicking a glance up at Mr. Stark. The crinkles of laughter around his eyes make his stomach flip.

“Look kid,” Mr. Stark says, reaching out to take Peter’s hands in his. His fingers are callused from work on his inventions, and the scrape of them against Peter’s palms feels unbelievably good. “It’s not you I doubt. But I know how minds work. They do weird things to protect us from reality sometimes. So I believe that you believe everything you’re telling me. I just also know that what it felt like for you to disintegrate in my arms, so …”

Mr. Stark takes a moment, clears his throat. Peter could swear he’s fighting off tears.

“So you’re gonna have to give me some time to figure all this out. I’m gonna figure it out, Pete, it’s just …”

“I can prove it,” Peter says, interrupting him.

“What?”

Peter tightens his jaw and looks Mr. Stark straight in the eye.

“I can prove it,” he says. “I have … I have scars. From those years. I didn’t have them before, and I do now. That proves it, right? That it was real? You don’t get scars from dreams.” 

Mr. Stark is silent for a long moment.

“Pete,” he finally says. “I just want you to be prepared. Whatever you think is gonna be there, it might not be.”

Before he can hesitate any further, Peter unclips the web shooters from both of his wrists and slips them off one at a time. With a deep breath, he turns his wrists out so that Mr. Stark can see them. 

The scars aren’t new, but they are impressive in their own way, thick pink slashes across both his wrists, the scarring thick and bumpy. They’re there, just like he knew they would be, undeniable proof of both the passage of time and his own weakness.

He rubs at them, the raised skin oddly empty of feeling, a void. When he looks back up at Mr. Stark, he looks afraid for some reason. Peter expected pity, not fear, and he doesn’t know how to react.

 

*

“Fuck, fuck, fuck …” 

When Peter slips the web shooters off his wrists, Tony doesn’t know quite how to react. He’s seen the kid’s wrists so many times without ever thinking about what a vulnerable spot they are, how much damage could be done. He pictures Peter rolling up his sleeves so he can practically dive into the engine of one of Tony’s cars to tinker, so he can swipe the last slice of pizza from under Rhodey’s nose, when he’s nervously pouring over a textbook in the lounge of the Avengers complex. He never noticed them before, not really. Pale, unblemished. And now … _Jesus_.

Tony’s up out of his chair and pacing in front of Peter’s bed before he knows it. The scars are wide and raised and raw-looking even though he knows, he knows they’re healed over by now. But Peter has super-human healing. He’s been stabbed before and it barely left a thin white line. For something like this to happen, for a scar like this to be left behind, Peter had to be determined. It isn’t a cry for help, it’s a goodbye. He had to really mean it.

“I did,” Peter says, raising his head from his hands to look at Tony, his hair falling softly into his eyes. “I meant it.”

Well, fuck. He must have said at least some of that out loud.

“Pete, I …”

Peter folds his legs and settles on the end of the bed to watch Tony, his face soft, apologetic.

“I don’t anymore,” he says. “But … It was a hard time. My brain chemistry’s always been a little bit,” He waves one hand in the air as though to clarify something. “Off, I guess. When I was younger I was on medication and in therapy, and it helped a lot to balance me out. But after the spider bite my metabolism was so out of control that the meds stopped having any effect. I just burned through everything so fast, courtesy of that super healing. And it didn’t feel like I could really tell a therapist much about my life.”

“Kid,” Tony says, working to keep his voice soft and calm and not high and shot-through with panic. “You don’t owe me any explanations.”

“I know, but I want you to understand. For a while being Spider-Man, that drive to save people, the feeling that I was responsible to something bigger than myself, that helped. Probably it was also the serotonin from swinging off of rooftops.”

He says the last with a wry smile.

“I still had bad days, but it helped. And then everything happened, and I wasn’t prepared to deal with that. I felt so helpless, directionless, and my entire support system was gone. Aunt May, Ned, MJ … You. I just, it was stupid. Obviously. It was so, so stupid. But I didn’t see a path forward. I couldn’t see any future that wasn’t bleak. I think it would have worked if it weren’t for my healing factor. I cut so deep.”

“Jeeze kid …”

Tony feels like his heart is breaking. _My fault._ He thinks. _This is my fault._

“I never should have left you alone, Pete,” he says, finally.

“You weren’t exactly given a choice,” Peter says with a bitter laugh.

Tony wants nothing more than to gather Peter Parker up in his arms and never let him go, but something holds him back, holds him distant. The last day has left him so vulnerable, he feels like he’s been vivisected and his guts are out on display. And Peter doesn’t need him to crumble. He needs him to be strong. He needs him to be fucking Ironman.

“No,” Tony says. “But I’m here now. I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere. And we are going to figure all of this out.”

“You believe me, don’t you?” Peter asks, voice so frail and unsure. “You believe it was all real?”

“Yeah, kid.” Tony says. That much is pretty fucking hard to deny now. “Yeah, of course I believe you. I don’t understand anything that’s going on, but we’ll figure it out. I promise.”

Peter nods and smiles with so much trust in his face, his thin, sleep-deprived, subtly older face. Tony missed five years of his life. He somehow missed the kid growing up entirely. Fuck. The universe is weird.

 

*

When Dr. Banner comes back to check on him, he lets Peter know that the other Avengers are starting to wake up. It’s good news. Peter knows he’s got Mr. Stark on his side now, but it won’t hurt to have corroboration for his story from everyone else.

“When he wakes up, I think we should talk to Stephen,” Peter tells Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark.

Mr. Stark still hasn’t left his side except for those few minutes when Peter had his breakdown. Peter thinks he must be exhausted by now. The purple crescents underneath his eyes certainly confirm that assumption. Dr. Banner has attached some sensors to Peter’s head and torso and is staring at readings on a holoscreen. Tony has filled him in quietly, in the corner, about his scars. “Physical evidence of time passage,” he had said. It’s a clean, clinical way to put something so dramatic. 

Peter still feels the burn of shame in his chest at having to show Tony that proof of such weakness, such brokenness. But it had to be done. So much of Peter’s life since that dark day have been taken up with things that must be done. It’s about straightening his spine and pushing through all the obstacles in front of him. It’s not the best strategy for his mental health, maybe, but he’s had other concerns. He still does. Which is why he needs Stephen. 

“Hm?” Dr. Banner asks, absentmindedly.

“Uh, Pete, Cap’s just fine, if you need to talk to him now, but he didn’t …” 

“Not Captain Fucking America,” Peter says. He’s still a little bitter about the Captain’s involvement in the whole Civil War fiasco. The way he treated Mr. Stark never sat well with Peter. “Why would he be any help? I mean Stephen Strange. Overdramatic wizard with a sentient cape? Willfully unhelpful in most situations? Also he’s possibly an alien because, let’s be honest, he speaks with an accent never uttered before by anyone else on the planet. You know what I’m talking about, right Mr. Stark?”

“Honestly, kid? Hardly ever,” Mr. Stark replies with a smile.

“Unfortunately,” Dr. Banner interjects. “Dr. Strange has yet to be seen, at least here in Wakanda.”

“Shit,” Peter says. “He probably fucked off to Tibet as soon as he got back.”

Peter glances over at Mr. Stark, who’s eyebrows have gone up. It’s hard for Peter to think about how all this must seem to him. The truth is that even at 15, when he first met Mr. Stark, Peter cursed like a sailor. He went to public school and May Parker was his guardian. Really he had never stood a chance of being mild mannered. 

But he’d never spoken that way around Mr. Stark. Initially he’d been too in awe of the man to be on anything but his best behavior and later, after they had gotten to know each other, the precedent had already been set. But now it’s been five years, and Peter’s not used to controlling that part of him anymore. There had been no one left to care anymore.

“Look,” Peter says, doing his best to ignore Mr. Stark’s reactions to everything he does.  “Stephen always acted like he knew more about what was going on after the snap than any of us.”

And been monumentally unwilling to share that knowledge. _I can’t interfere with the timeline, Peter. It could spell disaster for us all._ What a fucker. Of course he would disappear now when Peter might finally be able to get some answers.

“If he’s off in Tibet with his magic monks, it would be a good idea to give him a call,” Peter continues. “I’m guessing he’ll be able to shed some light on the situation.” 

“Well, how do you suggest we do that?” Tony asks. “You got his number?”

“Well, no,” Peter says. “But don’t you guys have a line of communication set up with Kamar-Taj?”

“Who what where now?” Tony asks.

Peter just blinks at him. How could they possibly have managed to bring them all back without consulting with Kamar-Taj? Peter had spent months and months pouring through books on magic sent down from the sanctum there in order to come up with his plan. Even with Stephen refusing any type of council, the theories they contained had been invaluable.

“Seriously?” He asks. “The more I hear the more it seems like you guys just weren’t trying at all.”

And, ok, that was too far. Peter was kidding. Obviously. And perhaps he’s a little bitter because six months? Really? At six months he had still been wallowing in grief on a spaceship in the middle of nowhere. But the two men in front of him seem taken aback. Mr. Stark’s face has gone completely blank in a worrying way. Oh God.

“I-I was joking,” Peter says. He can feel his face go completely red. “It was a joke. Too, um, too soon?” 

He gives a nervous laugh, but the room is awkwardly quiet, and Peter feels horribly. He looks down at his hands.

“Sorry,” he says into the emptiness. “Sorry, I … What do we do now? What’s next?”

Tony and Bruce exchange a tense glance.

“Next,” Tony says. “It’s time for the Avengers to assemble.”


	2. Chapter 2

It takes two days for Dr. Banner and the rest of the medical staff to clear everyone for the big meeting, and by that point Peter is going a little stir crazy. He’s used to spending days, and most nights, in the lab. He’s used to having something to constantly occupy his mind. Now he he can’t seem to make his mind stick to anything, and he doesn’t even have anything to fiddle with. He considers, briefly, taking apart and reassembling the vitals monitoring system, which is the closest thing to a computer that he currently has access to, but decides it might create too much trouble for the doctors and nurses to make it worth it.

He avoids the television because most of the shows are in Wakandan anyway, except for a few news channels. Watching the news makes him feel like he’s in an episode of Black Mirror right at the point where the ominous music starts to swell and you know something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong. And Mr. Stark has so far refused his requests for either pencil and paper or a computer, only saying that Peter needs to focus on recovery.

He’s had tearful video calls with Aunt May and Ned and MJ, but there’s only so much of that emotional overload he can take in his current state of mind.

 So once he’s able to be out of bed for more than 15 minutes at a time without deep exhaustion dragging him down, he literally starts climbing the walls.

Currently, he’s crouched on the ceiling, reading an old issue of Popular Science from a stack that Dr. Banner dropped off for him in between checking on other patients.

His hair is hanging down into his eyes, and he misses his mask. He’ll have to build a new suit eventually. Everything he owns aside from the things he had on him when he and Wanda cast the final restoration spell is lost in some now-defunct future. Maybe he should have planned better, but he thinks he can hardly be blamed for not expecting time travel to be a factor.

He stretches his spine and flips the page in his journal. He’s reading about a study that found that depriving fruit flies entirely of sleep didn’t negatively impact life span. The implications for humans are certainly interesting. Peter, with his recent sleep habits, could probably qualify to be part of a human trial. He’s moving on to another study on climate change when Mr. Stark pokes his head in through Peter’s door and looks around, visibly alarmed by the empty hospital bed.

“Underoos?” he calls. 

“Up here, sir,” he says with a wave, flipping another page.

Mr. Stark is dressed up today, in a blue pinstripe three-piece suit and a tie in clashing shades of purple and yellow with an eye-watering geometric pattern. He’s got neon yellow-lensed smart glasses on and cranes his neck up to set his eyes on Peter in an appraising way that makes Peter suspect the older man is scanning his vitals with FRIDAY’s help. 

His heart gives a heavy thump at the thought. Peter’s enhanced senses make him into a human lie detector when he really concentrates. He can register even small changes in someone’s heartbeat and breathing, but he bristles a bit at the idea of anyone doing the same to him. It’s hypocritical, but no good can come from Mr. Stark discerning all of Peter’s secrets.

“How ya feeling this morning, kid? Little restless?” he asks with an understanding smile. 

It’s one thing the two of them share, that inability to stand inactivity. Peter’s chest warms a little at that easy sympathy. Things are still a bit awkward between them after his faux pas a few days earlier. Despite the awkwardness, that slight but meaningful distance being kept between them, Mr. Stark hasn’t let him spend a night alone yet. He’s set up camp in the visitor’s armchair by Peter’s bed every evening, showing no sign of actually sleeping. But then that’s hardly unusual for Tony Stark.

Peter’s tried to tell the man he can leave, that he’ll be fine, but he is secretly grateful for the company. He’s plagued by nightmares of that day whenever he finally succumbs to sleep, and having Mr. Stark right there, reaching out to him, whenever he comes out of one of those dreams is a comfort that has allowed Peter to slip back into sleep despite the terror he feels.

“I’m going crazy here, Mr. Stark,” he admits, unfurling his body and stretching out, feet still stuck to the ceiling. His shirt rides up, hitting him in the face, and briefly muffling his voice. Yeah, the suit really needs to be a priority. “I’m fine now. I wanna go back to the lab. I wanna sleep in a bed without monitors.” 

Mr. Stark just blinks at Peter, silent for a long moment, and Peter can’t help but blush under the scrutiny.

“I know kid,” he says. “We’re gonna make that happen. Just need to get the good doc’s sign off. And there are a few more conditions we need to talk about.”

“What’s to talk about?” Peter asks. He does a little flip to dislodge himself from the ceiling and lands gracefully on his feet.

Mr. Stark completely ignores his question.

“Brought you a present,” he says instead and pulls a sleek silver laptop out from under his arm that Peter had completely failed to notice.

“Holy shit, are you serious?” Peter say, bouncing on the tips of his toes in excitement. He grabs the computer from Mr. Stark and settles on the end of his bed, booting it up.

“It’s not entirely selfless,” Mr. Stark is saying. “I was hoping you could make some notes, jot down some data on your method for, um … Bringing us back, I guess? For the meeting this afternoon.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Peter says with a shrug. The Starkbook has clearly been customized. It’s got some pretty sweet multi-dimensional graphing capabilities. “I wish I still had access to my data.”

Mr. Stark nods.

“So, you know, knock yourself out. Just try not to spend all your time on Facebook or whatever.” 

“Facebook?” Peter snorts. “Who uses Facebook anymore?”

“Ok, well, the Snappers or Instamatic or whatever the kids are using these days.”

“Snap Chat,” Peter says. “Instagram. God, you’re old.”

“Alright, whippersnapper,” Tony says with a laugh. “Meeting’s at 1. You’ll be alright to make a presentation? I hate to put you on the spot, but …”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Peter says, fingers already flying across the keyboard. “I got this, sir.”

 

* 

It’s somehow unsettling to have so many of the Avengers together again in the same room. Not a week before, they had barely filled up one end of the long glass conference table. Now there almost isn’t enough room. It’s not bad. It could never be bad. But it makes Tony feel out of place in his own skin. Like it doesn’t fit just right.

He’ll have to grow back into this, he realizes. He’s shaped himself around the pain and void where his teammates should be, the way trees will sometimes grow up around obstacles – fences, abandoned bicycles, the ruins of buildings – and now he has to adjust to something new.

Peter is at the front of the room, throwing up graphics for his presentation. Cap, is sitting with Bucky, Sam and Nat on one side of the table with Thor, Quill and the Raccoon and Giant Tree on the other. Shuri, Nakia and T’Challa are at the head of the table. 

It’s hard to miss how they are all returning to those previous factions. It’s a little sad, actually. But Tony feels incredibly grateful for Bruce and Rhodey flanking him on either side as they lean against the back wall.

In the front, Peter is fiddling with a hologram that looks oddly familiar …

“Wait, are those Strange’s little whirlygigs?” he calls from across the room.

Peter’s head pops up like he’s a confused puppy.

“I was gonna go with Gallifreyan,” Bruce whispers to him.

“Nerd,” Tony snipes back under his breath.

“Um, inspired by some of books he leant me,” Peter says, sliding his precariously tilting glasses back up onto his nose. Honestly, Tony doesn’t know why he still wears those things. He doesn’t really need them. Hasn’t since before they knew each other. Still, there’s no denying that he makes the look work for him … _Move on, Tony. Move on._  

“So you’re saying you used magic to fight Thanos?” he asks. “Since when can you do magic?”

Tony realizes he sounds unnecessarily aggressive, but he’s a little offended that Peter would neglect to tell him something like that. And maybe a little left out. After all he’s seen, Tony can hardly deny that magic exists, but he’s always been a man of science, and he thought Peter was too. He’s Tony’s protégé after all.

“Well, I don’t,” Peter is saying. “I designed the physical mainframe that we channeled the spell through, and a biochemical compound to amplify the effect …”

Then he’s typing frantically and pulling up some detailed notes. 

“I wrote out our whole process,” he says. “Naturally there wasn’t a spell that perfectly matched our needs, but I was able to pull the necessary elements from multiple texts ... Are you upset right now?”

Tony huffs.

“I’m not upset,” he says, feeling his voice go higher than it should. “I’m confused.”

“You are,” Peter says. There’s a moment when his expression is blank, and Tony thinks he’s going to go offended and distant. Instead his face splits into a smile and he laughs. “You’re mad because I didn’t try to save the universe in the same way you did.”

“How dare you,” Tony says, fighting to keep an echoing smile from taking over his face. “How can you think I would ever be so shallow?”

Peter just rolls his eyes.

“Ok, Iron Man, tell me what far superior method you used.”

“Melted down the Infinity Stones for ore, used it to create a super-powered electro-magnet to pull entities with a given bioelectrical signature back into this realm of existence.”

“Uh, is he speaking English?” Quill fake whispers.

“I never know what you Terrans are talking about,” replies the talking raccoon. Nope. Never not gonna be weird.

“Ugh,” Peter exclaims, tugging a little at the ends of his hair. “I had that thought too.”

“Oh, sure you did, Underoos.”

“First of all, that nickname is offensive. It was offensive even when I was fifteen. And second of all, yes I did. Our second year. Only we couldn’t exactly destroy all the stones, so …”

“I’m sorry, what?” Steve pipes in, but he’s interrupted as the door open and Clint comes in, supporting Wanda with one arm.

Over the past few days, Wanda has been the worst off of all the returned Avengers. While they all suffered exhaustion and dehydration, when Wanda had come back she had been out of her mind, speaking mostly in Russian and largely incoherent for most of that time.

From what they could make out, she’d spent most of her waking hours asking about her brother. When reminded he had died she … had not reacted well.

She still looks pale and stricken, but her eyes at least seem more clear than the last time Tony saw her. Then, in an instant, her face transforms. 

“Pietro!” she cries. She’s crossing the room so quickly Tony could swear she teleports directly into Peter’s arms.

“Wands,” he’s saying, hugging her tight. “What’s going on? They told me you were sick.” 

“They told me you were dead!”

She’s shaking, but pulling back from him to look at his face and trace it with her fingers.

“I thought you were dead, and it was all for nothing.”

Well, those two have gotten … close. It’s not surprising, really. They’ve been through a lot together. Five years of work and grief and attempts to fix things. Nothing about that situation should upset Tony, and yet when he watches them, speaking quickly together in a mix on Russian and English, something tightens unpleasantly in his gut. He wonders just how far that closeness extends.

He shakes it off and turns an inquiring eye to Clint, who is being backed up into the doorway by Natasha.

“So, it’s obvious some errors have been made,” he’s saying, raising his hands defensively. Nat has her arms crossed and her visage of eminent evisceration firmly in place on her face.

“You said you had it handled. You said Wanda trusted you and you had everything handled, Clint.”

“And in all fairness, I thought that I was telling the truth.”

He attempts to take a step back, but her eyebrows slump down into an even more intimidating frown and he ends up doing a little two-step to prevent the appearance of retreat.

“So, I’m guessing nayk doesn’t mean brother?” he asks with a wince.

“Bozhe Moi,” Nat spits at him.

“Ok, well let’s just keep in mind here that one of us is a literal Russian spy trained to speak multiple languages, and one of us learned Russian from Madam Anke the bearded lady in between the matinee and evening shows at Carson’s.”

Clint waits a beat to see if his excuse will hold water. When Natasha does nothing he lets his shoulders relax minutely and he lets out a breath. Of course it’s then that she hauls her arm back and slaps him with audible force on the side of his head. His hearing aid lets out a high-pitched whine.

“Futzing … Ow, Nat. Ears!”

“Cretin!” she says. “Bpat is brother. Nayk is spider. They don’t even sound the same!” 

“I’m sorry!”

She huffs and walks away and Clint follows behind, puppyish. 

“Nat, Nat, C’mon…”

When Tony looks around the room, it’s clear that Wanda’s entrance has thrown the entire meeting into chaos. Everyone is talking at once and this, this isn’t productive. Tony brings two fingers to his lips and stops the room cold with an ear-splitting whistle.

“Ok, comrades, let’s huddle up, shall we?”

Faces turn towards him, most of them caught in some expression of irritation. 

“Hey, let’s remember that I did nothing. Not a thing. I just kind of thought the point of this pow wow was to debrief.”

“Yes,” Steve says. “I think there’s some important ground we need to cover. Like how half of us apparently didn’t destroy the Infinity Stones? I think that’s something that might need correcting.”

He shoots a very pointed glance over at Peter, who squares his shoulders.

“If you’ve got something to say to me, Captain Rogers, you can go ahead and say it directly.”

The thing is, Tony knows he should be beyond this kind of pettiness by now. Steve and he have made their peace. Really, they have. But there’s a little part of him that’s filled with pride and something else warm and probably wrong – he’s accepted that most of his emotions are – when Peter stands his ground against the good Captain.

“Why didn’t you destroy the stones, Peter?” Steve asks. “What could you possibly be thinking?”

He sounds like the scolding grandpa he secretly is.

Wanda starts to stand, but Peter puts a hand gently on her arm.

“We did destroy most of them,” Peter says. “Well, some of them. We destroyed some of them.”

“Why not all of them? They’re too dangerous to keep around.”

“They were too important to destroy. This wasn’t just my call, Captain. We all voted. It was unanimous.”

Steve puts on his stirring the troops to be their better selves face. Tony’s seen it a million times. Hardly ever fails.

“Peter, don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can control the power of those stones. They are beyond you.”

This time, Peter’s blank expression isn’t split by that thousand-watt smile. But he does laugh, cold and sharp. It’s a sound Tony’s never heard out of him before, and he’s not sure he likes it.

“All due respect, Cap? Fuck you.” 

“What could possibly be so important?” Steve asks with a bang of his fist on the table. It vibrates alarmingly.

“Which ones did you keep?” Tony interjects.

“I’m sorry, what?” Steve says.

“Pete,” Tony says, snapping in Peter’s direction to draw his attention away from Steve. “Which stones did you keep?”

Peter’s eyes meet his in a silent appeal, but Tony doesn’t back down.

“Time, Soul, Mind,” he says in a voice as reluctant as scraping stones.

“Time Stone because it’s Strange’s geological life partner.”

“Stephen is sworn to protect the Time Stone,” Peter says.

“Soul Stone because …”

Peter’s mouth stays in a firm, straight line, but his eyes flick over to Quill. Damn, the kid is a terrible liar.

“Gamora,” Tony concludes, turning to face Quill. “You idiots think you can trade the Soul Stone for Gamora.”

“We at least deserve a chance to try,” Quill says. He’s fidgeting nervously with a cassette tape with a cover that reads _Awesome Mix Vol. 3_. “Look man, you can torture me, search me. You’re never gonna find the stone. I am a brick wall.” 

“It’s in the tape holder, you imbecile.” 

Quill promptly fumbles the tape and it goes flying out of his hands only to be caught by the tree man.

Tony turns back to Peter and raises an eyebrow. Peter just raises his hands in exasperation and lets out a sigh.

“So that just leaves the Mind Stone,” Tony says.

They face off in a long, silent stare-down.

“The Mind Stone belongs to Wanda,” Peter says at last. “She has the biggest claim to it.”

“Loki nearly took over the planet with the mind stone.”

Steve again. Seriously, does the man never learn when to shut up?

“Well, we’re obviously not going to allow that to happen again. Anyway, isn’t Loki dead?”

Thor clears his throat.

“To be fair,” he says, his voice a soft rumble of thunder. “I have thought so many times before. Loki has a way of oft defying expectations.”

“That’s not what I …” Peter takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. When he opens them, they are hard in a way that Tony’s not used to. He turns to Steve. “Ok. Here’s the situation. This is not an argument to hash out. The decision has been made. You destroyed the stones. We didn’t. Now, you can come to terms with that, Captain Rogers, or you can get the fuck out.”

Peter flicks a glance to T’Challa, who has been watching the proceedings silently. He gives Peter a measured nod of approval.

“Don’t be stubborn, Son,” Steve says, and Tony can’t help but wince at that phrasing. “Wanda, I’m gonna need you to give the stone to me for safe keeping until we can destroy it.”

He moves toward them, and Peter and Wanda stand in unison. Peter using his body to block her and Wanda summoning up one of her red energy balls.

“I’d like to see you try to take it from me,” she spits at him.

“Bucky, a little help?” Peter says.

Then Bucky Barnes steps in front of Steve and puts one metal hand on his shoulder to stop him. This Tony did not expect. His brain is clicking. Making connections.

“Stevie,” Bucky says.

“Buck?” Steve’s confusion is clear. 

“This isn’t a fight you’re gonna win, Buddy. You need to stand down.”

And Steve is, for once, speechless. He stares at Bucky, tilting his head to one side like the confused and betrayed Golden Retriever he is.

And into this awkward, tense silence, walks Stephen Strange. He’s sipping coffee from Tony’s Star Trek mug, cape whipping around him on a wind that definitely isn’t there.

“Oh good,” he says. “I made it in time for the fisticuffs.”

“Gandalf! You made it!” Tony calls, thinking that, as satisfying as it is to see Peter go toe-to-toe with the good Captain, he’s really let this go on for too long.

“To be fair, I didn’t exactly get an invite to the reunion,” Strange replies.

“Stephen, where have you been?” Peter asks, turning away from Steve and Bucky. His hand slips to the small of Wanda’s back to direct her back to her chair.

“I had to check in on the sanctums and my people. Things are still a bit unsettled,” Strange says. “I see you can relate.”

He walks down the length of the room, stopping to shake Tony’s hand, and then waves his hand to make a comfortable leather armchair appear at the head of the table and sits. He leans his elbows on the table.

“So,” he says, looking, for some reason, directly at Peter. “Have you figured it out yet?”

“God, you are so infuriating,” Peter says, flopping back into his seat in a pout. “No, I haven’t figured it out. You win.” 

“Alternate realities?” Bruce interjects. “We already know the multiverse is a big place.”

“Close.” Strange says. “But it’s more of a single, split reality. Two halves of one whole temporarily separated by Thanos’ work.”

“Why would that even happen, though?” Bruce asks. “Thanos wanted to kill half of the universe. He said that’s what he was going to do.” 

“Yes, well, he was also wielding the Infinity Stones. They’re the literal seeds of the universe we live in. And that means they’re also a little more sentient than we originally gave them credit for. The Universe doesn’t want destruction. It wants balance.”

“So instead of ending half the universe they just … Split it in half?” Bruce says. 

“Exactly.”

“And that’s what you saw on Titan?” Tony asks. “That’s why you needed me alive. To pull the two halves back together.”

“Well, self-confidence was never your problem, Stark,” Strange says. “Don’t give yourself too much credit, though. You were only half the solution.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“On its own, your little supercharged magnet wouldn’t have done anything. But combined with Peter and Wanda’s spellwork, you were able to pull in and bind the two halves together. It’s very elegant, really. Like I said, the universe seeks balance.”

“So why did we end up here?” Peter asks. “It’s been five years for us. Why did we travel back instead of the other way around?” 

“Simplicity?” Strange says with a shrug. “Think of it like the universe returning to the closest thing to factory settings it could manage. It reverts to the earliest possible timeline. That’s also why we all felt like shit for the past few days. Think of it like jet lag times about a million.”

“I guess time travel takes a lot out of you,” Peter says with a laugh. “Fuck, I’m never gonna get used to this.”

“You adapt surprising well, Peter.”

“And you could have told me all this at any point, you complete bastard.”

Strange just laughs.

 

* 

“What?” Peter asks. “Have I got something on my face?”

He wipes at it, self-consciously. Mr. Stark is giving him a strange look, and Peter just isn’t sure what it could mean. 

The meeting had broken up soon after Stephen’s revelation, despite them reaching no accord on what to do about the remaining Infinity Stones. Peter reminds himself that they don’t need agreement. The decision has been made. The problem will be enforcing it.

Still, Captain America giving him the death stare is unsettling. Peter can still feel it itching between his shoulder blades.

Mr. Stark is leaning against the wall outside the conference room in an elegant slouch.

“You know,” he says. “If I had to put money on who would lead the Avengers with me and Cap out of the picture, I never would have picked you.”

“Well, gee, thanks,” Peter says, a bit stung by the statement. Ok, he’s not the most experienced of the Avengers, but he’s done good work, and Mr. Stark has yet to really acknowledge that. He really did think that he’d saved everyone while Peter twiddled his thumbs and played around with magic for years.

“Hey, don’t get offended, kid. I’m just saying you’re not the obvious choice. I thought maybe T’Challa, Strange. Quill maybe if things got really weird.”

“T’Challa had a whole country with half of its people gone to deal with. He had other concerns,” Peter says, his voice is angrier than he intends. “And, as discussed, Stephen was deeply unhelpful. Also, do you hear yourself when you talk, or do you just let it out and hope for the best?”

“Excuse me?”

“You realize Wanda is the most powerful of any of us, right? She could literally end us all with a word. And yet you went with Quill first? Quill?”

“That … Is a fair point.”

“Also, I’m not the leader.”

“You clearly are,” Mr. Stark says.   

He pushes himself off the wall and claps Peter on the shoulder.

“Hey, walk with me, kid.”

He tugs Peter along with him down the hallway in the general direction of the lab.

“I see the way they look at you,” Mr. Stark says. “They follow your lead. They respect your decisions. Hell, Bucky stood up to Cap because you said so.”

“We made decisions together.”

“I can see how your leadership style would lend itself to that, yeah.”

“I don’t have a …”

“Look, I know I’m bad at this, but I’m trying to say that I … That you’re … I’m proud of you, kid.”

And that makes Peter stumble and his chest tighten. He really, really wasn’t expecting that.

“I … Ok.”

They walk in silence, Peter inwardly cursing himself for his awkwardness and searching desperately for a new topic of conversation. Why is he like this? 

“I need you to let Quill use the Quinjet,” is what he finally settles on. _Very smooth transition, Parker. You are just so suave._ “Bruce said you adapted it for interstellar travel. I need you to let him use it to go to Vormir.”

He can feel Tony’s hesitation, but eventually he gives a sharp nod.

“It’s gassed up and ready to go,” he says. “Tell Quill it’s his when he’s ready.”

“Thank you, sir." 

“So, the Time and Soul stones I get, but riddle me this. What does Wanda want with the mind stone? It’s not just nostalgia, is it? That’s a bad reason to keep something like that around. Not that I don’t trust you, kid, but …”

Peter considers what he should say. It feels private. Something between him and Wanda. But he can’t deny that Mr. Stark could be helpful. And he trusts him more than anyone. He’ll do the right thing.

“I promised her I’d help her bring Vision back,” he says.

“That’s a heck of a promise,” Tony says, scratching nervously at his goatee and sliding his eyes over to meet Peter’s.

“It is,” Peter says. “But we made a deal. I needed her all in on reversing the snap. In order to do that, I promised I’d help her bring Vision back once we were done. It was only fair, really. She helps me bring back the love of my life, I do the same for her.”

It takes entirely too long for Peter to realize what he’s said. When he does, it’s because his footsteps are the only ones echoing in the hallway. Tony has stopped several feet back, staring at Peter with his eyebrows up.

_Why, why, why, Parker you imbecile._

The thing is, he’s gotten so used to phrasing it that way that he didn’t even think about it. Sure, it sounds over dramatic, but they have been in very dramatic circumstances. Quill had been the first to realize. He’d sat across from Peter, crouched in a corner of the Benatar going out of his mind and just said it straight out like it was nothing.

“So you loved him, huh?”

“Yeah,” Peter had said. “Yeah, I did." 

Quill had nodded. He’d lost the person he loved best too. He understood. So did Wanda, once they’d finally made it back to Earth. They were united in that loss and the determination to undo it. They were sad sacks, but they were sad sacks together at least.

But he never, ever should have said it in front of Mr. Stark. His heart is beating as though it is going to burst out of his chest, and his lungs have suddenly forgotten how to process oxygen. But Mr. Stark is smiling a crooked smile, and so Peter knows that he doesn’t really understand what Peter has said. He doesn’t know.

Because the thing is, Peter knows that if Mr. Stark ever found out how he felt, it wouldn’t be met with smiles. There are exactly two ways that scenario could go down. A confession from Peter would be met with either pity or deep self-recrimination. There is no happy ending for Peter Parker.

Which doesn’t mean he hasn’t fantasized about how things could be different. He has fantasies so well-worn that they play in his mind with the same stutter-start, fuzzy quality of the old Disney VHS tapes that Aunt May would pull out and play for him on days when he was sick. Sure, they had the Blu-rays, but there was something special about the videos, something worn and comfortable. Peter likes that the fantasies he has of Tony reaching out to him and holding him close when Peter says “I love you” feel the same way. It helps him remember that they will, never, ever be real.

Mr. Stark doesn’t know. So Peter forces himself to take a long deep breath and pull himself together.

“Mr. Stark?” he prompts.

Tony smiles wider.

“Shit, kid, I didn’t even think. I know May’s flying in to see you, but I didn’t even think about your girl.”

“My girl?” Now Peter is confused.

Mr. Stark catches up to him in the hallway and, embarrassingly, ruffles Peter’s hair. He feels himself flush red. This is the worst. The absolute worst.

“Yeah, the surly one, right? The one who shouts at me about redistribution of wealth.”

“MJ?”

Mr. Stark shoots finger guns at him, and it’s so ridiculous it makes Peter smile despite his abject embarrassment.

“Right. MJ. I can fly her out too. It makes sense that you two would want a reunion.”

“Um, MJ’s kinda busy at Brown, Mr. Stark. It’s her first semester. It’s really important.”

“Right, I just thought under the circumstances …”

“What circumstances?”

“Shit, kid, love of your life?”

_Oh. Oh._

“No, Mr. Stark, I didn’t mean MJ,”

“It’s ok, kid. You don’t have to be embarrassed. I remember being young an in love.” 

“Mr. Stark, no …”

“I know, I know, you don’t want to talk about it with your middle-aged mentor.”

“Mr. Stark, I’m … I’m gay.”

“Oh,” Mr. Stark says, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “But I thought?”

“MJ and I dated for like a second in high school before I realized, but that’s been …”

“Years,” Mr. Stark says. “Right. I forget that was a while ago for you.”

Peter rocks back and forth awkwardly on his heels while Mr. Stark considers him.

“So, this guy then,” Mr. Stark says. “I’d love to meet the guy who stole my little Spidey’s heart. Offer stands kid. Or I could fly you out to visit him. Whatever. You’ve worked really hard for a really long time, Peter. You deserve a break with someone you …”

“We’re not …” Peter interrupts.

“What?”

“I haven’t exactly told him how I feel,” Peter says. “And anyway he doesn’t feel the same way.”

And now Mr. Stark is looking at him with the pity Peter anticipated and feared all along.

“It’s better this way,” he says, barely louder than a whisper. “At least we can still be friends if he never finds out, so …”

“Right,” Mr. Stark says.

“Right,” Peter echoes.

“So, you wanna go down to the lab and blow some shit up?” Mr. Stark says.

His hand falls warmly upon Peter’s back. It feels wonderful and terrible at the same time.

“Fuck yes,” Peter says.


	3. Chapter 3

The lab is redolent with the smell of sulfur and hot metal when Tony shoos Peter out around midnight. He makes sure the kid knows where to find his new room and then has Friday crank up the AC-DC, pours himself a very generous Scotch and dives head first into the job of rewiring the newest version of the Hulkbuster armor. Bruce had notes after taking it out for a spin, but Tony hasn’t really had time to do anything with them yet.

He’s hoping the repetitive action of stripping wires and reconfiguring the inner workings of the armor will help soothe away the unease that has been building in the base of his spine all afternoon.

It shouldn’t bother him. Why should it bother him? In fact, it doesn’t bother him. Peter’s a teenager. Teenagers fall in and out of love at basically the speed of light. So really, it shouldn’t matter that Pete’s apparently gone and fallen in love with some dick who clearly doesn’t deserve him.

But the thing is, Peter isn’t actually a teenager anymore. It’s a strange thing for Tony to accept. It happened when his back was turned. But Peter is undeniably grown up.

He’s so smart – sharp and thoughtful when Tony is used to him being enthusiastic but untrained – and a leader, a commander of loyalties. 

And that completely ignores the physical changes. Only the initial shock of Peter’s reappearance had prevented him from immediately noticing how different he is now. He’s taller, tall enough to look Tony in the eye when he used to have to look up to him. His face has lost its babyishness, cheekbones and jaw chiseled sharp over years. Then there are the muscles. Peter’s always had a gymnast’s body, but the definition on display now is definitely new.

Mouth going a little dry, Tony thinks back to the kid hanging from the ceiling of the medical unit, torso completely on display, his abdominals cut like some sort of obscene Greek statue and just as flawless except for a wicked curving scar just below his heart and a trail of hair down low on his stomach. Why those little imperfections had sent such a jolt through him he couldn’t really say. The sight had stopped Tony’s usually busy mind short, and for a full minute his brain had been filled with nothing but protective white noise. He hopes Peter didn’t notice.

Jesus, he’s a disgusting fuck. _You met him when he was 15,_ he reminds himself.

Tony doesn’t want to think about any of that, about Peter young, nervous and stuttering that day in his bedroom in Queens. About the echoes of who he would become in his declaration that if you could do what he could, and didn’t stop bad things from happening, then they happen because of you, or in the way he had webbed Tony’s hand to his door knob to convince him to keep his secret from his aunt. The determination and the fire in his eyes, even then … Tony doesn’t want to think about that. That’s a path to hell and damnation.

What Tony wants to do instead is find whoever this douchebag is that Peter is infatuated with and make him pay for the kid’s broken heart in blood and flesh. But he is a fucking adult who does not express his emotions through physical violence unless the lives or safety of others are on the line. He has to repeat that to himself maybe a few too many times.

And then spends a probably unhelpful number of minutes thinking about every guy he’s ever seen Peter hang around and whether or not they could be the mystery man whom Pete is convinced can’t return his feelings. 

There’s that little nerd with the Legos and the funny hats, but no, no Ned would definitely fall all over himself if Peter showed even the faintest hint of interest. The irritating one from academic decathalon? Zippy? But he’s a legitimate bully, and Peter had never been able to stomach bullies. Which means it’s probably that little shit Harry Osborne, and Tony really can’t stand that smarmy little fuck. He puts on a nicer face than his intellectual thief of a father, but there’s something about him that’s just off, and Tony has never liked Pete hanging out with him.

Maybe it’ll resolve itself, he tries to reason. Maybe now that their circumstances are less tense, Peter’s infatuation will fade and he’ll find someone else. Someone better for him. Someone who would treat him right. Tony valiantly declines to explore just what such a person might be like. Nothing good can come from that line of thought.

It’s just that he knows Peter, has learned his expressions and his nature over four years of battles, and training sessions, and all-nighters in the lab, and team pizza nights. The kid can definitely be distracted by shiny things – a new spidey suit, a difficult math problem, the occasional pair of limited-edition sneakers when Tony felt like he needed a treat.

But the expression on his face when he talked about this friend hadn’t been the one he uses for shiny, distracting things. It’s the one that steals over his face on rare occasions when he’s talking about the things that matter. About his Uncle Ben, about his duty as Spider-Man, about the beautiful mathematics of the arc of one of his web. It makes Tony’s chest feel hollow when he considers that expression. One of reverence.

He pours himself another drink, has Friday switch to Metallica and turn the music up to 11, and tries to narrow his world down to nothing but the pulsing beat and wires and connections. It’s mostly successful, and if a small part of his mind lingers in areas where it should not, at least he’s making an effort.

 

* 

It may be October, but Wakanda never really gets that crisp fall chill in the air. It’s a beautiful place, a cityscape seamlessly integrated into the surround landscape. At this time of late afternoon, the sun turns the trees that cover the surrounding mountains a brilliant gold.

But days like this make Peter deeply homesick for New York, for Queens, for his neighborhood, for his block. At this time of year, all the pedestrians on the streets will be dressed in flannel and scarves to combat the chill, and the air will smell vaguely of cinnamon from the coffee shops on every corner churning out pumpkin spice concoctions. The trees will be turning orange and red and Mr. Delmar will offer homemade horchata along with his usual deli fare.

He misses it all, misses feeling at home somewhere. But at the same time, he’s not sure he can ever go back to that life. Could he do it? Become a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man again? Protect Queens by stopping muggers and bus crashes and helping little old ladies cross the street after everything he’s been through and all the things he’s seen?

He doesn’t have an answer for that. He knows May is going to ask him to come home, and he dreads the look on her face when he has to tell her ‘Not yet.’

He’s got the project for Wanda he can claim as an excuse. But the truth is, he could work on that at the Avengers facility up state. He’s just not ready to return to that familiar yet foreign life.

Peter concentrates on breathing and staying calm while he stands on the sizzling hot tarmac. Just because the future is uncertain doesn’t mean it’s bleak, right?

His heart jumps when he sees the plane drift over the rim of the mountains. She’s here. He watches the plane grow larger on the horizon with his throat already choked with tears, and he gives up all pretense when he sees May emerge down the gangplank in high-waisted bellbottoms and flowy orange top, oversized glasses slipping off her nose, hair tied up in a messy bun. His eyes tear up and he feels his body tremor.

She’s running and tripping on ridiculously high platform heels, but rebalancing and pulling him into a tight hug.

“Peter,” she says, holding him close. “Peter, I swear to fucking God, if you ever do anything like that again I will stick my foot so far up your ass it’ll come out your fucking mouth.” 

Then she hauls back and slaps him on the side of the head. 

“We don’t climb onto alien space ships to take goddamn joyrides, Peter.”

Peter lets out a helpless, watery laugh, and that finally releases the floodgate of his tears. Yep. He gets his mouth from Aunt May.

“Yes, ma’am,” he manages to choke out through sniffles he can hardly keep in check.

She brings his forehead to hers, a cool hand resting on the back of his neck, so she can look into his eyes.

The embrace is so familiar. She’d held him like this when his parents went missing, when Uncle Ben died, when he’d come home crying because he’d lost his suit and the Stark internship in one spectacular failure. But it’s different now. He’s gained several inches in height and she has to pull his neck down and lift up on her toes so they match up. Her bones feel small and bird-like under his hands in a way they never did before. It makes him simultaneously so happy and so sad.

“I missed you so much, Peter,” she says.

“I missed you too,” he manages to whisper through the tears.

In his darkest moments – after a failed test or another frustrating, circular argument with Stephen – he had been convinced he would never have this again. But he does. He wrested it back from the universe by force, and he won’t let it be taken again. 

“C’mon,” he says, taking her hands in both of his. “I’ve got so much to show you. You aren’t going to believe the city.”

“I’m sure it’s great, Peter,” she says. “And you are definitely taking me shopping later. But first I want to hear everything.”

Peter tugs on her hand, pulling her toward the cool of the building.

“There’s not much to tell,” he says.

“Bullshit,” May counters. “We’re going to get food and hunker down and you’ll tell me everything you’ve been doing for the last five years. I want all the gossip. Do they do Thai here?”

Peter laughs, bright and carefree.

“Sure,” he says. “They do Thai.”

 

* 

The next morning finds Tony hungover and in a foul mood. He’s woken by Friday from a light snooze on the keyboard of his computer just after 11 with the news that Director Coulson of SHIELD has arrived in Wakanda and wants to debrief. 

He makes coffee in the little kitchenette just off of the lab space, waving a hazy hello to Shuri, who’s just coming in to start her work for the day, sending her lab techs scurrying with a few choice words.

“Looking a little worse for wear, colonizer,” she says to him as he stumbles around, a protective hand held over the top of his mug.

“And you are radiant as ever, your majesty,” he says over a yawn. “What’s your secret? Bathing in the blood of the oppressors? Cute cat videos? I feel like it could go either way with you, and that’s a compliment.”

“I find a full night of sleep works pretty well, actually,” she says. “You should try it sometime.”

“Hey now, let’s not get crazy!” Tony calls to her with a backwards wave as he walks away.

He showers and changes into a different black band t-shirt paired with a jacket with his jeans before finally seeking out Coulson in one of the lower-level conference rooms. By this point he figures the man expects to be kept waiting by him, and he’s confused as to what he means by debriefing anyway.

The Avengers have worked closely with SHIELD in their efforts post-snap, and Coulson gets the inside scoop beyond that from Clint, so there shouldn’t really be much he doesn’t already know.

Coulson is dressed impeccably in grey Armani when Tony shuffles into the conference room, nursing his third cup of coffee of the day. He’s reclaimed his Star Trek mug from Strange. It’s oversized and is the only cup he’s found around the whole complex that holds a decent amount of coffee. He might be too emotionally attached, but it’s nice when something so perfectly fulfills its purpose.

“Director Agent,” he greets Coulson with a nod. “To what do I owe the honor? I thought you mostly just showed up for booty calls these days.”

“As usual, Stark, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Coulson’s tone is dry and affectless. Tony just smirks. The ceiling tile in the back right corner of the room is wonky. Clint is getting sloppy.

“Sure, sure,” he says. “But what do you want? I have things to do. Important things." 

“We need to debrief …” 

“Try again, agent. You know everything I know already. I feel like I’ve been very open. After all, communication is key if you want to keep the romance alive, don’t you think?” 

He and Coulson stare each other down with twin raised eyebrows – Tony’s right, Coulson’s left.

Coulson blinks first and Tony chuckles.

“I need to talk to the Spider-Man,” he says. “My sources tell me he’s the mostly likely to have some information critical to the future of SHIELD.” 

“Ok, well, that sounds like a whole bunch of ominous, but does not explain why you called me down here at ass o’clock in the morning.”

“Jesus, Stark, it’s noon.”

“And I don’t do my best work until after three,” Tony says, sipping his coffee. “Answer the question.”

“My sources …”

Tony fakes a cough into his fist.

“Barton,” he chokes out.

“My sources,” Coulson reiterates. “Also indicate that it would be more peaceable if I got your approval before having a conversation with him.”

“That is … surprisingly insightful. Good work, Barton,” he calls up at the ceiling.

There is a frustrated huff from above, and then Clint is lowering himself down from the ceiling.

“The exact words I used were ‘You better get Daddy Stark’s approval first or he’s likely to start another fucking superhero war,’” he says with a grunt as he hits the floor. 

Tony’s gut twists uncomfortably at that phrasing.

“I’m no one’s daddy,” he says through gritted teeth.

Clint just snorts.

“Coulda fooled me.”

“He’s a kid. I’m protective.”

“He’s not, and you’re obsessive.”

Well, Tony can’t really argue with that.

“Potato, tomato,” he say, waving his hands dismissively.

“I need to talk to him, Stark,” Coulson says. 

Tony lets out a deep, childish sigh.

“Fine, but I am present for any and all questioning. “

“But you will not interfere,” Coulson counters.

“That depends on the questions,” Tony grinds out.

He doesn’t like this. Sure, since they ousted most of the literal Nazi’s, SHIELD hasn’t been doing bad work, but he’d be ridiculously naïve if he didn’t think they’d kill to get a good look at Peter’s biology. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what he can offer them.

At least here in Wakanda SHIELD authority is basically zero, and Tony has some control over the situation. As much as he believes Coulson is a good guy, he doesn’t exactly trust him not to pull something for the “greater good” if given a chance, even if that something might endanger Peter.

If Tony is there, he can at least guard against Peter giving away too much information, anything that might make him more vulnerable to SHIELD once they all eventually leave the secluded safety of Wakanda and go back home.

“Tony, c’mon, don’t be a dick,” Clint is saying. 

“You’re one to talk, you little stool pigeon,” he snaps back. “What happened to what happens with the Avengers stays with the Avengers?”

“Hey, I got everybody’s best interests in mind …”

“Shut up. You know what, fine. I’ll go see if the kid is available for a chat. But the both of you will stay in your lanes,” he says, pointing back and forth between them.  “This is not an inquisition. Kid would be doing you a favor.” 

He stalks out before either of the men can respond. He really is pissed at Clint even though he knows he doesn’t really have a right. It has quickly become apparent that his foremost loyalty is to one Phil Coulson.

He thinks he scares a few people stomping down the hallways of the Wakandan Capitol complex as he makes his way to Peter’s room. The Dora Milaje are assuredly unintimidated by him, but the rest of the everyday staff seem a little put off by his glares. 

When he reaches Peter’s door, he doesn’t bother to knock or wait, just barges in and then immediately regrets it when he finds Peter and May sprawled out on his bed watching Disney movies.

They don’t immediately notice him. Peter’s head is in May’s lap, and she’s combing her fingers through his wild brown hair as the character on screen is singing about not saying she’s in love.

“ … Not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I don’t know where I fit anymore. Like, it all feels a really long way away,” Peter says.

May hums at him, and Tony starts talking before he overhears any important confessions.

“May Parker, looking lovelier every time I see you. I mean, honestly, you got Strange working some magic on you so you age backwards? ‘Cause I could use some of that kind of juju.”

“Tony!” she exclaims, a smile flashing as she pulls herself gracefully off the bed and moves to give him a tight hug. “Thank you for bringing my boy home.”

“Hey, from what I can tell he did most of the work,” Tony says returning her hug. 

“He’s an overachiever like that.” 

He’ll never forget having to sit at May’s kitchen table, face still grimy with the dirt of another planet, and tell her that Peter was was gone.

_“I’ll get him back,” he had said to her. “I’ll bring him back to you, I swear.”_

_“You fucking well better, Mr. Stark,” she had said with tears in her eyes. “Or I’ll hunt you down and end you myself. I don’t care what kind of goddamn super hero you are.”_

He honestly didn’t think that either of them would ever recover, and yet here they all are, together again. He can’t help it. He wraps his arms tighter around her waist and spins her around as they giggle together. 

Tony spins a little too enthusiastically and they end up tumbling backward onto the bed. Tony’s arm bumps against Peter’s leg, and he hooks his hand around his ankle, looking up at him with a smile that he can feel is on the wrong side of goofy. Still, he can’t manage to care. He feels light in a way that he hasn’t in so very long. 

strangely sad. That just won’t do.

“Peter,” he says, cutting off a laugh prematurely and trying to force his face into a more serious look. “I need you to do something for me. It’s very important. You ready?” 

Peter looks down at him seriously and nods.

“Peter under no circumstances can you smile. You must keep from smiling at all costs. Do you understand me? Do. Not. Smile.”

The kid immediately screws his face up to prevent his lips from tilting upward. Oh, Tony is going to break him.

“I mean it, kid. You can’t do it. Don’t you dare.”

Peter’s face twitches, and he screws his mouth up further. 

Tony moves his thumb up and down the back of Peter’s calf in a way that he knows has to tickle, especially with Peter’s amped-up senses.

“Doing great, kid. Gotta hold out.”

When Peter’s smile breaks through, it’s like the sun through clouds. Then he’s laughing and kicking Tony off, and falling back on the mattress.

“You don’t play fair,” he says. 

Tony flicks his eyes over to May, who’s looking at them with a sort of soft, hazy look.

“Never, kid,” he says.

“Hey,” Peter says, rolling over onto his stomach. “I was gonna take May to the market this afternoon. Do some shopping, take in some local color. You wanna come with us? There’s this guy who makes the most fantastic cassava dumplings, and you’d really …”

“Nah, kid. I’ll let you two have some family bonding time. But before you go sightseeing, I actually came here with a purpose.”

“Oh?” 

“The director of SHIELD is here. He wants to talk to you.”

Peter sits up straight, and then his frown is back. 

“Fury’s here?”

“No, no. New guy. Phil Coulson. Said he wants to ask you a few questions. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Peter. But if you’re ok with it, I’ll be there the whole time. Nothing’s gonna happen that you’re not ok with.” 

Peter nods once.

“Yeah, I’ll come.”

He gets up, looking around the room for his shoes. He’s still wearing the same clothes he was in when he came back. Shit, Tony needs to get him something else to wear.

“May, I’ll try to be back in a few hours? I can call somebody if you want? Wanda or …”

“No, no I’m fine. You go. I’ll explore around here for a bit,” May says. “We’ll catch up later.”

 

* 

Tony’s never been good at the whole sitting still and listening thing. But here he is. He’s been sitting at the back of this room for going on an hour while Coulson takes Peter through what feels like every detail of his time post-snap. Tony’s leg is jostling under the table, and he’s tapping out more and more complex rhythms on the glass top.

It’s not that it’s not interesting, but Tony’s already been through all of Peter’s detailed notes on his work to undo the snap, and it’s hard to concentrate on the layman’s version at this point. Unlike his hero Captain America, Coulson seems relatively unconcerned with the continued existence of several Infinity Stones.

He’d only nodded when Peter filled him in and said lightly. “Seems like they’re in good hands.”

Tony wants to know is what Coulson’s goal is here. He already forwarded Peter’s notes to him, and he has scientists to explain it all. He’s after something else, building to a point. Trying to get Peter comfortable in a way that suggests he hopes he’ll slip up.

“So, Mr. Parker, while you and your companions were working on this spell …”

“Could we …” Perter interrupts him. “I mean, it’s really more of a formula if it’s anything. After all, magic is just science we don’t fully understand yet. We aren’t in Harry Potter. Although, how cool would that be? I’m just putting this out there, but we live in a world with genocidal aliens and hundred-year-old super soldiers and, ooh. Quill was telling me about this lady who can shoot fire out of her fists who’s on a rampage against these other blue aliens? I mean, fire fists. How badass is that? Anyway, all I’m saying is if we’ve got all that, surely there have gotta be some dragons out there somewhere, and I kind of think finding them and taming them should be more of an international priority is all.”

Tony sits up from his slouch and raises and inquiring eyebrow at Peter. Maybe the kid can sense it too? That Coulson is narrowing down to his point, finally. It’s not unlike Peter to ramble, but he’s smart, and Tony can’t put it past him to use that talented mouth to his advantage. _I didn’t mean it like that,_ he tells his body, sharply. _Down boy._

“Right, well …” Coulson is saying.

“I mean, tell me there’s not a tiny part of you that wants to be a dragon rider, Director Coulson, because I will not believe you.”

“That’s very amusing Mr. Parker, but what I’m wondering is what SHIELD’s involvement in your work was? Did we provide technical support? Oversight?" 

“Why should SHIELD be involved at all, Director?” Peter asks, his tone gone suddenly cold.

Yep. Coulson’s hit a nerve.

“Forgive me, Mr. Parker. It’s just that the whole situation is rather in our wheelhouse. I assume you had contact with someone in SHIELD, if only to provide updates like Mr. Stark here did.”

“As I think we’ve established, Director, Mr. Stark and I had very different approaches to the problem.”

Coulson smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Who was your contact, Mr. Parker? Was it Director Fury?”

Peter stares at him silently.

“And what if it was?” he finally asks. 

“Then I would ask you, Mr. Parker, why Nick Fury didn’t reappear with yourself and the rest of your compatriots.”

Peter sighs, his head sinks into his open hands for a quick moment before he resurfaces and stoically looks Coulson in the eye.

“I guess it doesn’t really matter,” he says. “You wanna charge me with treason, you already can since I haven’t signed the accords, and I don’t intend to. Director Fury was our contact with SHIELD initially. He based himself here in Wakanda, but after about a year of us making attempts to reverse everything, he and the rest of the World Council got restless. Director Fury informed us that we needed to set the project aside and return to active duty peacekeeping efforts. Things were a bit unsettled at the time.” 

“And you responded how?”

“I disagreed,” Peter says. “Vehemently.”

“And why would I have any reason to charge you with treason, Mr. Parker.”

“Well, I disobeyed a direct order from the director of SHIELD and the world council,” Peter says, then continues in a low voice, speaking quickly. “Also, I kicked him out of the country.” 

“You what?” Tony shouts, incredulously. 

“I beg your pardon?” Coulson asks.

“With King T’Challa’s permission of course,” Peter clarifies, as though that might make it better.

Laughter bubbles up in Tony’s chest. His eyes water at the effort to hold it in. “Oh my God,” he rasps out. “This is the best day ever.”

“You kicked Director Fury out of the country?” Coulson’s rapid blinking is the only thing that betrays his shock. His tone is still imminently controlled.

“I sorta had to knock him out and put him on jet out of Wakanda.”

Tony is gripping his stomach by this point as the laughter overtakes him.

“You knocked,” he says in a gasp. “You knocked out Fury.”

“He’s got a hard head,” Peter says, drily. “It took way more force than I anticipated.”

“So that means you don’t know where Nick Fury is?” Coulson asks. 

“No, sir.” Peter says, trying but failing to sound chastened. “I’m afraid after that we cut off contact with SHIELD, though T’Challa’s men frequently intercepted SHIELD spies on the border.” 

“Shit,” Coulson says eloquently. 

“Sorry?” Peter offers.

“It’s fine,” Coulson says, unconvincingly. “This just wasn’t supposed to be my job, you know? I am fundamentally a behind the scenes guy.”

Tony works hard to get his laughter under control, and Peter gives Coulson a sympathetic look and a pat on the shoulder.

“Hey, man. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have any idea where he might be?” 

“If I had to guess? He’s busy putting together a new team. That’s really his MO. But after I kicked him out I didn’t really bother keeping tabs, you know?”

“Right.”

“Look,” Peter says, looking unsure for a moment. “If you really need to find him, I know a guy who’s pretty good at tracking people down. It’s sort of in his job description.”

“I … Thank you, Mr. Parker. That would be quite helpful.” 

“But you should be sure, because he’s not really an easy person to work with.”

“SHIELD needs its leader, Mr. Parker.”

“Your call, dude,” Peter says.

With a sigh, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and dials a contact, flipping the video chat up onto a hologram screen so Coulson can see everything. 

It barely has a chance to ring before a voice is screaming “Baby Boy!!!” in a high screech before a masked face comes into view – red with large black panda-like eyes. Tony’s stomach drops.

“Hey Wade, how’s it hanging?” 

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t know exactly how it hangs, baby,” the masked man says, the whites of his mask narrowing suggestively. “Though if you’d like an encore, I’m always happy to oblige.”

Peter rolls his eyes. 

“I actually need a favor, Wade.”

“Aw, I feel like you’re always calling me for work, Petey. You know what all work and no play does.”

“I thought Nate was back on-world,” Peter says. “Doesn’t that mean your playtime is spoken for?”

“Oh, baby boy, you have no idea,” he says with a squeal. “But I told him all about you and that glorious, glorious ass, and he says that if you’re ever in the mood you should join us sometime. He’s a cyborg, Pete. Ten inches, literal steel.”

 _What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?_ Tony’s brain hurts. Is he having a stroke? Does he smell buttered toast? 

“Well, I’ll definitely keep that in mind,” Peter says. And then – And Tony can hardly believe this – He winks. “But seriously, man, I need you to do me a favor. Calling in my chips from that time in Harlem with that weird blobby Akira-looking thing.”

“No way, dude. That was totally one of your villains of the week.”

Peter responds with a raised eyebrow.

“OK, fine,” the man says with a huff. “That ugly bitch was one of mine. I’ll own it. Watchu need baby boy?”

“I need you to track down Nick Fury.”

“Nick Fury? As in the guy from SHIELD? That … May actually be too rich for my blood, Petey. Those Nazi motherfuckers are everywhere, and they do not stop.”

“I don’t want you to kill him,” Peter says, holding his hands up. “Please, please do not kill him. I just need you to track him down. Wade, this is acting SHIELD Director Phil Coulson. Director Coulson, Wade Wilson, alias Deadpool.”

“You look familiar,” Deadpool says. “You’re not an acquaintance of Lady Death, are you? I never forget a face.” 

“We were introduced briefly,” Coulson says, pinching the bridge of his nose like he’s trying to fend off a headache. 

“Cool!” Deadpool says. “Resurrection buddies!”

“So, cool,” Peter says, moving the conversation along. “Thanks, Wade. You’ll let Director Coulson know when you find something?”

“You got it Baby Boy.”

“And you definitely won’t kill him?”

Deadpool is silent for a long, long moment.

“Wade.” 

“Yes, alright,” he says. “Definitely won’t kill him.”

 “Good Deadpool.”

“Ooh, Baby boy, when you talk like that you know it makes me want to just bend you over and…” 

“Bye Wade!” Peter calls out, and swiftly ends the call. The tips of his ears are red and his cheeks a light pink.

“Thank you, Mr. Parker,” Coulson says. “I think.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t be sure either,” Peter says. “But good luck with him. We done here?” 

“Yes. I appreciate your candor.”

Coulson stands and shakes Peter’s hand.

“Stark,” he says as he waves them both out of the room.

The silence is palpable as Peter and Tony walk back toward Peter’s rooms.

“So, Pete,” Tony says when it all gets too heavy. “Did you, by any chance, just possibly, sleep with Deadpool?”

Peter flushes again, his whole face now turning the same bright red shade of his ears, and rambles nervously.

“I mean, just the once? Well, maybe more than once. Just a couple … I mean, definitely not more than a handful of times? Yes. Definitely. That.”

“Holy Shit, Peter. Deadpool? The mercenary? Are you insane?”

“He’s actually a really nice guy,” Peter says, kicking at an imaginary rock and hiding his face from Tony. “He puts on a good front, but he really is trying to do better. We used to patrol together and everything, back when I was still in New York.”

A deeply horrifying thought crosses Tony’s mind.

“Wait, he’s not the guy you …”

“No!” Peter says, turning to face Tony with eyes wide and hands up defensively. “God, no! I’m not, and Wade’s in this serious, long-term relationship with a time traveling cyborg from the future. Nate. I’ve never met him but Wade is very attached.”

Tony lets out a sigh of relief. He still can’t quite wrap his head around the idea of Peter and Deadpool and … No, just no. There are things the brain just isn’t meant to process, and Tony has had far too many of them roiling around in his head in the past few days.

“Listen, kid, I got some stuff I gotta do in the lab,” It’s a lie, but he needs some time to himself to process. “I’ll let you get back to your aunt. See you later?”

“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot,” Peter says. “It’s Tuesday.”

“Um, did you need to remind yourself kid, or was there a point there?”

“It’s team dinner night,” Peter says, as though it’s obvious.

Tuesdays were always team dinner night at the compound, even though there were very few team members left. Usually it was just Peter, Rhodey and Tony. Sometimes Vision was around, but often he was off visiting Wanda. Tony had almost forgotten those.

“Right.”

“Aunt May’s making my grandma’s spaghetti and meatballs.”

Tony gives Peter a skeptical look. He’s been forced to eat far too many of May Parker’s meals back when he was trying to get on her good side post Peter’s big Spider-Man reveal. It was never, ever a pleasant experience.

“I know, I know,” Peter says. “But she brought my grandma’s recipe card and everything, and as long as I’m there to make sure she doesn’t improvise it actually turns out great.”

 

“So what you’re saying is you’re cooking team dinner,” Tony counters.

 

“Yes,” Peter says with a laugh, bumping his shoulder into Tony’s and sending a warm flush cascading down his body. “I’m making dinner. Aunt May will be there to watch and occasionally stir things if I feel like she can handle it. You should come and eat the food I intend to loving prepare for you. Also, bring plenty of wine in case she decides to get creative behind my back.”

“Well, how could I ever resist such an offer?” 

“Also, maybe invite the Captain?” Peter suggests cautiously. “I don’t think I’m exactly his favorite person right now, but he doesn’t deserve to be excluded.”

“Why do you call him that?” Tony allows himself to ask one of the many questions that have been niggling at him. “Not Steve, not Captain America. It’s this weird mix of formal and rude.” 

“Well, I can’t call him Steve, we’re not exactly on a first name basis,” Peter says. “The last time I saw him was, like, eight years ago when he dropped a plane on me in Germany. And calling him Captain America just makes him seem so … heroic.” 

“Well, he’s a hero,” Tony says.

“No offense, sir. I know you grew up on stories about him being all honorable and brave and shit, but I have experienced absolutely none of that personally. I know he didn’t care what he did when he was fighting against a kid, and then he very nearly killed you. Now, maybe I don’t have the whole story, but if he wants me to think anything else of him, he’ll have to prove himself.”

Tony’s so swept up in the words that he doesn’t notice that Peter is holding onto his hand when he gives this little speech. It’s like sensory overload. One too many positive inputs. He’s overwhelmed, and he turns away and pull his hand from Peters.

“Ok kid. You call him anything you want.” 

“You’ll invite him to dinner?”

Tony nods his head, jerkily.

“And you’ll show up too? You look like you could use a good meal, sir.” 

“Don’t mother hen me, kid. More irritating people than you have tried.”

Peter tugs on his arm insistently, forcing him to turn around.

“You’ll come, though? It’s a tradition.”

“Yeah kid,” Tony says. “Yeah, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

And dammit all, it’s true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll, honestly, when I started writing this thing, I figured it was destined to live out a lonely life on the Internet while helping me work out all of my Infinity War feelings. So thank you so much to everyone reading and commenting. You rock. I really love these two dummies, and I hope you do too.


	4. Chapter 4

There’s entirely too much chili flake in the pasta sauce – May seasons with her heart, but not her taste buds – and the meatballs end up with a weird texture that suggests she has snuck something vegetable rather than animal into the mix. But in the end, it’s edible, and Peter makes sure there’s enough chianti on the table to ease the flaws of the meal.  

So many members of the team show up that they won’t fit around the large dining room table in one of the common areas, so they spread out on low couches and chairs in the adjacent living room. It’s technically part of the royal living quarters, but was apparently intended for visitors to the royal family, so it’s set away from the heart of the capital complex, with a wall of windows looking out to the mountains. 

When everyone has eaten their fill, they sprawl across the living area in little clumps, talking. Peter’s heart is momentarily filled to brimming when he looks over the crowded room.

Nat and Bruce are sprawled out on the floor, legs hooked around a coffee table and heads together. Rocket, Groot and Thor are playing some kind of complicated card game at the dining room table. Peter can’t quite understand the rules, but it seems like Rocket is trying to get Thor to add his prosthetic eye to the pot. 

“All I’m saying, man, is that if your cards are as good as you say they are, you got nothing to worry about,” the raccoon is insisting.

“I am Groot,” Groot concurs.

Peter’s been trying to pick up Groot’s language a little as he goes along. It’s fascinating. An entirely tone-based language, like Mandarin on super hero steroids. In all honesty, he hasn’t gotten very far.

He gives Quill a friendly slap on the back when he passes him, in animated conversation with Rhodey, who’s back to check in after a long deployment.

“Ok, Ok, explain it again,” Quill is promoting Rhodey. “In this game, everyone is connected to Kevin Bacon?”

His tone is full of wonder. Peter’s glad he’s able to let loose a little tonight. In the morning, he and the rest of the Guardians are heading for Vormir. Stephen’s agreed to go with them to advise, because apparently he’s had a personality transplant and is all about being helpful now.

Peter even exchanges a not-antagonistic nod with Captain Rogers, who’s sitting on one of the long banquettes along the wall with Clint and, inexplicably, Director Coulson. 

Peter goes to lean against the wall of windows so he can survey the whole party, eyes skimming over Nakia and T’Challa flirting in one corner, Sam and Drax having what at least seems like a friendly argument over by the fireplace, and finally landing on Mr. Stark and May sitting side by side on one of the couches.

It seems weird to him that the two of them are suddenly getting along. Before Titan, May had been angry at Mr. Stark for pulling Peter into the vigilante nonsense – Her words, not his – and had bristled anytime Peter had even mentioned the man. He had tried his best to broker a peace between the two of them, but when May made up her mind about something, it was hard to change.

But obviously something big has changed, because she’s sitting close to him, throwing back her head and laughing at something he’s said, hand placed affectionately on one bicep, and oh God. _No, no, no, no, no._ May definitely cannot be flirting with his, his … With his Tony.  But Peter Parker has never been lucky in love, so of course she can be. And of course he can be responding, leaning in towards her with those flashing dark eyes and a mischievous smile on his face. 

Peter thinks back to this afternoon, when Mr. Stark had come to his room, and the way he and May had clung together. He looks away and scrubs his face with both hands. He can’t think about this. It must be lack of sleep causing him to spiral. He doesn’t sleep great in the most ideal circumstances, but certainly not with May sharing his space.

She had insisted that she didn’t need her own room while she’s visiting.

“Jesus, Peter, this room is almost as big as our whole apartment,” she’d said.

It had been like a punch to the solar plexus because of the way she called it “our apartment.” Like she was holding a place for him there. Like it’s something he could really go back to. His but for the asking.

The result of that shock was that he didn’t argue when she’d thrown her stuff onto his bed and relegated him to the large, fluffy couch. It’s plenty comfortable, but Peter hasn’t slept since she got here because if he sleeps he has nightmares, and he can’t bear to expose her to that. She deserves some peace after everything he’s put her through. Plus, the nightmares are actually more like night terrors, and he can’t really control his strength when his sleeping mind is convinced he’s fighting for his life. He’s genuinely afraid he might hurt her if she tries to wake him up from one of his screaming, thrashing terrors.

“That bad, huh Boss?” Bucky knocks a shoulder against his as he slides in beside Peter.

“Argh,” Peter responds, rubbing more violently at his eyes.

“Oof,” Bucky says. “I guess it really can be that bad.”

Peter looks up to see that May has her legs draped over Mr. Stark’s legs, one shoe off as he gives her a foot massage. _What the fuck?_

“So you see it too, huh?” he asks.

“Yep, Boss. Those two right there are making serious bedroom eyes at each other. Condolences.”

“Thanks, I think.”

Bucky nudges at his hand with a silver flask and Peter takes it.

“Stole some of the vodka Nat hoards in her room. Be careful, it goes down smooth and it’ll knock you on your ass.” 

“Sounds like a pretty good solution to me,” Peter says, taking the flask and a long swig. His Spidey metabolism means it takes a hell of a lot to get him drunk. The stuff that Nat keeps tucked in the back of her closet is one of the few things that have ever been able to do the trick. He’d discovered her stash during one of his weekends at the Avengers compound. After the incident in Germany, the facility and had been pretty empty, and those who had been on the run, like Nat, never had the opportunity to clean out their rooms.  

“You realize this is mine now?” Peter asks Bucky.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” Bucky intones with a smirk.

“Shouldn’t the USSR brain experiments have ruined Marxism for you?”

“Nah, my momma ground that into my head long before the Russians ever got ahold of me. She was a union organizer back before the war.”

“Well, I appreciate your willingness to help a comrade out,” Peter says, taking another swig.

“Kid there better be fruit juice in there!”

Mr. Stark’s voice cuts across the room, and makes almost every head turn in Peter’s direction, making him choke on the liquor and flush deeply.

“Fuck, what is my life even?” he whines under his breath. Bucky slaps Peter’s shoulder in solidarity.

Mr. Stark has gingerly set May’s feet back on the ground and is walking over to Peter gesturing dramatically to the flask still in Peter’s hand. May is on her feet now, eyebrows screwed together in concern.

When Mr. Stark reaches him, he makes grabby hands at the flask.

“Give,” he says. “Now.”

Peter pulls the flask closer to his body.

“No,” he says. “What the hell, Mr. Stark?”

“Trust me, kid, you don’t want to go down the path of teenage alcoholism. I speak from experience. Remember what we said, you don’t do anything I would do …”

“And I don’t do anything you wouldn’t do. Grey area. Yeah, I remember.”

What he remembers is his entire teenage body lighting up like a fucking Christmas tree when Mr. Stark had leaned over and Peter had thought he was going for a hug. He can still remember the foreign but intense heat of the man’s body so close to his, smelling of motor oil and something metallic beneath his expensive aftershave. And, well, that had been the beginning of Peter questioning his sexuality, if he had to really pinpoint it.

“Look kid, when you’re legal, I’ll get you drunk on the good stuff myself, but until then, fork it over, and lay off the sauce for a few years.”

And, ok. Maybe this makes sense now, but it makes Peter feel very small. One hell of an ego boost when the object of one’s affection first blatantly flirts with the woman who raised you and then mistakes you for a teenager. But then, that’s the Parker luck for you.

So instead of arguing or whining like a child, Peter meets Mr. Stark’s gaze and raises one eyebrow.

“Penny in the air,” he says.

Mr. Stark’s face screws up in confusion, and then the confusion transforms into realization, and he runs his hands through his hair. The product in it makes it stick up in a million different directions, and he looks so adorable and chastened that Peter can’t help but smile even through he’s still upset with him. He is. Really.

“Penny drops,” Peter finishes, taking another swig of vodka. The burn is a little comforting, at least.

“Gonna be honest kid, I do not have an exit strategy here.”

“You do seem to have talked yourself into a bit of a pickle, sir, but I imagine you’re used to that.”

“It’s a good point,” he says, then turns his attention to the room at large. “Ok, people. As you were!”

On his command, the room fills again with the gentle susurrus of multiple conversations happening at once.

“Nicely done, sir,” Peter says.

“Thanks, kid. Sorry I stuck my foot in it,” Mr. Stark says. “Just … gonna take some getting used to. New and improved Peter Parker. 100-point restoration.”

“You know, Mr. Stark,” Peter says, pushing his luck because he’s never seen a contrite Tony Stark before, and the possibilities suddenly unfolding are interesting. “It might help you to remember if you stopped calling me kid.”

The man’s head tilts to one side in consideration, and for a moment Peter wonders, could it really be that simple? Did he really only have to ask? With Mr. Stark’s head at that angle, he’s looking up at Peter through long, dark lashes.

“I can do that, Pete,” he says, his voice lowered to a register that sends a shiver through Peter’s body. “If you drop the Mr. Stark.”

 _Well, shit_. It should be a simple thing. All he has to do is call Mr. Stark by his name. It isn’t simple though. He knows himself too well. For someone with an ostensibly secret identity, Peter is a terrible liar. He’s sure that Mr. Stark will be able to hear just how utterly gone Peter is on him the second he slips up and calls him Tony. He only calls him Tony in fantasies.

They stand there, looking at each other, for what has to be too long. Peter knows it’s too long. He needs to look away. He needs to say something.

“C’mon Pete,” Mr. Stark says with a flash of white teeth. “You can do it. Just four little letters.”

“But you keep telling me to watch my language, Mr. Stark.”

Mr. Stark laughs, throwing his head back at the response. Still, there’s something off in his eyes when he takes a step back from Peter and says “As you wish, kid.”

When he walks away, Peter feels like he’s lost at a game of chicken he didn’t even realize he was playing.

The party breaks up soon after, and Peter and May head back to his room. When Peter flicks on the light, he finds a brown paper bag with it’s top crinkled and rolled down sitting on the center of his bed. _“You deserve the best – TS”_ is written in Mr. Stark’s spiky handwriting on one side. When he opens it, he finds a long bottle of Glenfiddich Whisky, its contents glinting a deep amber in the light.

Peter’s throat goes very dry as he holds it in his hands, the glass cool to the touch.

“What’s that?” May asks, coming over to him and looking over his shoulder. When she sees, she lets out a low whistle. 

“Present from Mr. Stark,” he mutters.

“Wow, I think that stuff is pretty expensive Peter,” she says.

“He really has no sense of restraint,” Peter replies.

“Maybe we should save it for a special occasion then,” she says, rubbing a hand across his shoulder blades. “Like your graduation maybe.”

Peter tenses immediately. He should have seen this coming. She’s been too agreeable for the past couple of days. May is wonderful, but agreeableness is not one of her very many positive attributes.

“Yeah, I guess I kind of missed graduation, huh?” he says, lightly. It’s vaguely possible that he can still avoid a confrontation. 

“I was talking to Tony earlier, and he said he has a lot of pull at MIT,” May says. “If I had my way, I’d keep you closer to home, but Boston’s only a few hours by bus. You could come home some weekends. And they’ve got a really good science program, Peter. You’d do really well there.”

Peter shakes his head. He’s thought about it, what with Ned starting at NYU and MJ at Brown, but he can’t see it, can’t stand the idea of wasting another four years of his life sucking up to professors who don’t know as much as they think they do and burying himself in books when he could be working on practical applications.

“What would be the point, May?” he feels small as he says it. She wants so badly for him to have that slice of normal life, but doesn’t understand that Peter doesn’t want it, not now, and maybe he never had. 

“To learn, to get a degree,” she says. “Peter, honey, you have so much potential. You could do anything. I just want to give you all the opportunities to succeed you can have. And you deserve it, too, Peter. You deserve a chance to be a college kid, to figure out who you are.” 

“I’ve already done that,” he says. “I know it’s hard for you. To you, I’m still 18, and I don’t know who I am yet. But that was me years ago, May. I still wanted to be that irresponsible kid. Back then I would have killed to go to MIT, and study under brilliant professors, and go to frat parties on weekends. But that isn’t me now. I … I’m old enough to know I want more than that.”

“Honey,” she says, and her eyes are bright with tears. “You can still have that. You’ve got this chance to go back.”

“You don’t ever get to go back,” he whispers.

Then he clears his throat and straightens his shoulders.

“I have some things I need to wrap up in the lab. You should go to bed. You have a good night.”

He kisses her on the cheek, to show he isn’t mad. He just doesn’t want to have this conversation anymore.

 

*

Tony is making some tweaks to the nanoparticle reactor down in the lab later that night. He’s shirtless, and he’s got the thing pulled out of the socket in his chest, still connected by a few dangling plastic-coated wires. He’s trying to install a new program that should, if all goes to plan, make the nanites move more intuitively. He’s adding just a touch of AI to the programing.

The strangeness he feels when the reactor is outside of his body never fades. For the few short months between his heart surgery removing the need for the original arc reactor and his invention of the nanoparticle reactor, he had felt like a piece of him was missing. His balance was off, and he had become accustomed to that familiar weight on his chest.

When he had done his first test of the new reactor, felt it sink into the cavity of his chest, it had felt oddly right and satisfying, like completing a circuit. Probably it’s just another thing wrong with the way his brain works. It is kind of a tangle in there sometimes.

Like now, when he keeps getting caught in a loop where he goes over and over that last conversation with Peter where he, ever so charmingly, refused to call Tony by his name. It had stung. It still stings because, sure, he was Peter’s mentor, his benefactor, maybe. But he had always thought they had also been friends. 

Ok, they had never been bare-your-soul type friends. Or, well, Peter hadn’t been. Tony has never been the type to bare his soul to anyone. But as much as he could do, he revealed himself to Peter. 

He shared anecdotes about his mother, and Aunt Peggy and the original, inimitable Jarvis. He let the kid into the lab even on the dark days when one of his depressive moods hit and he could barely drag himself out of bed, much less shower and shave. For god’s sake, Peter had full access to Tony’s private computer server where he keeps all his plans, all his blueprints, all his flashes of brilliance and crushing failures.

To another person it would seem like nothing, but to Tony it was terrifying vulnerability. Maybe, Tony thought, maybe that trust didn’t go both ways. What reason did he have to think, after all, that Peter thought of him as anything other than the weird old guy he did science with.

Maybe he had put entirely too much weight on the relationship. After all, for Peter it had been years since they had even seen each other. He had no clue that Tony had been prepared to tear the world apart to bring him back. And if he had known? _Creepy._  he thought. _Getting creepy, Tony. Better cut it out._

He keeps spiraling further and further downward while he fiddles with the reactor in his hand, achieving nothing.

A clatter from the lab entrance, when it comes, startles him so much that he almost drops the reactor on the floor. When he pulls himself out of his funk, Peter is standing by the door, bottle of whisky gripped in one hand, staring wide-eyed at him. Those warm brown eyes scan Tony from the tips of his mussed hair to the toes of his sneaker-clad feet before zeroing in on his chest. Or, more probably, the empty metal-lined socket where the reactor should be.

It’s ridiculous, of course, but being under Peter’s eyes like this makes him nervous. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and chews on it. He knows what he looks like. He’s got muscles, sure, but his chest is covered in a constellation of scars from his kidnapping, lab accidents and missions, and the whole thing sort of slants inwards, bones weighted down from years of carrying the arc reactor around. It’s not anybody’s idea of a pretty sight.

After sitting for far too long in that awkward silence, Tony prompts Peter.

“You doing ok there, kid? You’re not having a stroke, are you?”

“Um,” Peter says absently. “N-no sir.”

He drags his eyes away from the reactor casing and tucks his hands in the pockets of his jeans, fiddling nervously with something.

“Sorry, sir,” he says. “I just wasn’t expecting…”

“Doing a few updates,” Tony says, gesturing with the hand that holds the reactor. Peter looks like he’s about to bite off his own tongue.

“Hey, relax, Pete. At least this one isn’t keeping me alive, yeah? Come give me a hand.”

Cautiously, Peter approaches the bench where Tony is set up, and without prelude, Tony slips the bottle out of his grip and hands him the reactor. 

“Here, hold down this button right here,” he says, positioning Peter’s hands appropriately. His hands are cold, but the skin is smooth, flawless. Ah, that spidey healing has to be nice.

Peter holds down the button as instructed, but his eyes are still wide in shock, and he trembles, almost imperceptibly.

“This is a little tricky to do without an extra set of hands,” Tony says. “Lucky you came along.”

“Yeah,” Peter mutters, watching closely as Tony uses a tiny screwdriver to open up a hidden panel in the reactor and pull out a pinky nail-sized computer chip.

He sets the old chip aside and fumbles around for the replacement. 

“So, what brings you down here so late, kid?”

Peter shrugs.

“I sort of had a fight with May. Wasn’t gonna sleep anyway, so I thought I might as well get some work done.”

Tony has a sinking suspicion of what they argued about. 

“You know I’m bisexual, right?” He asks, before he can second-guess himself. He’s focused on sorting through his tools on the bench, and is careful not to look directly at Peter to intensify the conversation. He really does look so tired.

“What?” Peter says, voice betraying intense confusion.

“It’s not like I really try to keep it a secret, but it’s not one of the things I talk about a lot. It’s out there, though, y’know? There’s a sex tape and everything. Don’t Google that, by the way. I was unaware I was being filmed, and he did not capture my ass at its best angle. There are some things you can’t unsee.”

When Tony risks a glance at Peter he looks as though he’s about to choke on his own tongue. He should probably learn to shut his damn mouth at some point.

“M-Mr. Stark, why are you telling me about your sex tape?”

“I just … I don’t want you to feel like you’re alone Pete,” he says. “You’re not the only queer Avenger out there, so if May is concerned about you coming out, about there being a ruckus, I just … You aren’t. Alone, I mean. And I’ll stand by you, if you need anything. I’m even happy to create a media distraction if that’s what you need. That is at least one thing I’m reliably good for.”

“You don’t have to do that, sir.”

“I think I’m in a position where I don’t have to do a lot, kid. That’s what I’m saying. If you need it, I’m offering.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Stark, but you don’t have to worry about that. I’m not about to make a big announcement. I’m out to all the people who matter. I appreciate it, but that’s not what May and I were arguing about.”

“Oh,” Tony says, siting back and taking a deep breath. “Well, then this is kind of awkward.”

He makes to turn away, having forgotten that he’s connected to the reactor, and thus to Peter, by the wires in his chest. He’s jerked back unexpectedly, and Peter reaches out a hand to steady him.

“Mr. Stark, are you alright?”  

His voice is high and panicked. Tony rubs a bit at the area around the reactor port, sore now from the jerking motion.

“Yep. Just fine, kid. No worries. So, you wanna tell me what you and May were arguing about? That doesn’t seem typical for you two.”

“She wants me to go to college,” Peter says.

“Ah.” _Well, shit._

“Kinda wish you’d talked to me before telling her you could get me into MIT, sir.”

“To be fair,” Tony says. “You would easily get yourself into MIT. You’re more than brilliant enough to have the admissions committee salivating over you. All I would be doing is removing some of the red tape. Easing the way. If you decided to go." 

“I’m not going,” Peter says. His mouth is set in a perfectly straight line. He’s angry.

“Ok. Ok.” Tony says, attempting to appease him. “Look, kid. She asked about it, and I told her I was happy to help in any way you needed." 

“Yeah, you too seemed really cozy at dinner,” Peter snaps.

The vitriol in his voice is difficult for Tony to explain. It feels out of place. Of course he’s trying to charm May Parker. She’s the only person Tony can think of with enough influence over Peter to make him keep his distance from Tony. 

Once upon a time, he was the one trying keep his distance, calling in Happy in as his intermediary, but he won’t do that again. He can’t even stand the thought. He can’t get away from the toxic idea that now that he has Peter back, he wants all of him, without any of the barriers of the past. _Wrong, wrong, wrong._  His brain taunts him. 

“Well, forgive me for trying to make nice with your aunt, Pete,” he says. “It wasn’t too long ago she was baying for my blood.”

“Why do you even care?”

It’s the first time in a long time that Tony has heard Peter sounding like a typical angsty teen, and he’s not a fan.

“Why do I care? Seriously, kid?”

“Yeah. I’m seriously asking.”

“Because you care what she thinks,” Tony says. He’s not shouting exactly, but it’s a fine line. “She’s your people. So if she hates my guts, then how long are you gonna stick around?”

Peter sucks in a deep breath, like Tony’s slapped him instead of just spoken forcefully.

“If you don’t want to get rid of me, then why are you trying to send me away to Boston?”

“It isn’t what I want!”

Peter meets his gaze fiercely, his jaw clenched tight, then his shoulder’s sag, and all the fight seems to go out of him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m just exhausted, and so much has happened. So much …”

Now that Tony’s looking close, there are dark bruises under his eyes, and his skin is sallower than it should be. He hates it. Peter should never be in anything but glowing good health.   

“Hey, Pete, it’s ok,” he says, covering the kid’s shoulder with one hand. “It’s ok. Let me just …”

Tony finally locates the replacement chip in the pile of spare parts and tools on the bench, and slips it into the appropriate slot, then screws the cover back in place. He takes the reactor gently from Peter’s hands and pushes it into the chamber, twisting to secure it.

“Thanks for the hand, kid,” Tony says.

“I’m not going,” Peter says while he fiddles with the cover to make sure it’s stable. “I’m not wasting another four years. It’s not like I need it to get a job. Oscorp or Reed Richards would hire me in a second.” 

That makes Tony look up, startled, at Peter. He’s offended. He thinks Peter should just know he always has a place by Tony’s side, and it hurts to think he would willingly take his talents to one of Tony’s competitors before just asking him for a job. 

“Over my dead body are you working for those hacks at Oscorp,” Tony says. “If you’re working anywhere it’s at SI with me.”

“You haven’t offered me a job yet, sir,” Peter replies. There’s a weak smile on his lips and, well, it isn’t much but it makes Tony a little more hopeful for both of them.

“Alright then, you little smart ass. Come work for me.”

“Maybe,” Peter says. “But I’ve got some things I’ve got to wrap up here first.”

“For you, Peter Parker, I’ll wait.”

 

*

Peter doesn’t need to Google Tony Stark’s sex tape. He’d already done that, the images burned into his brain like a brand. And trust him, the man’s ass looked amazing.

To be fair, it had only been the once. What? He’d been 16 and questioning his sexuality, and there had been all of these rumors about Mr. Stark. Which it turns out had been correct. Peter had spent a blazing white hot 30 minutes watching the video with his eyes wide, glazed and unblinking and his hands shoved unceremoniously down his pants.

Immediately afterward he’d felt so guilty he thought his chest might burst with it. He was sure that May would find out even though he’d spent another 15 minutes clearing his browser history repeatedly, like Lady Macbeth washing her hands.

He was also deeply concerned that Mr. Stark would find out. If the baby monitor protocol had been a thing, who’s to say he didn’t also track Peter’s Internet history. He’d felt so guilty and mortified that the next weekend, instead of coming up to the compound to train and fiddle in the lab with Mr. Stark, he’d told May he was sick and had to fake the flu for 48 hours.

Despite the guilt associated with it, that memory has been one of Peter’s favorites of Tony to replay, so worn-out now that it practically hisses with the strain. It may be replaced, though, with the fresh image of a shirtless Tony, spotted with mechanical grease, and offering the goddamn reactor out to Peter to hold as though it were his own heart. Peter had had to finger the reactor that still sits heavy in his own pocket just to make sure he hadn’t been found out.

Tony’s chest had been heavily furred with dark hair, muscles taut but not bulging underneath, and covered in a thousand scars. Peter had had the ridiculous thought that he wants to spend an entire evening exploring each one with his lips and his tongue while Tony tells him about their origin and history. It had taken him entirely too long to be able to form words after that. 

The conflicting emotions of _don’t look, don’t touch_ and, horrifyingly, _mine,_ that had flooded his brain probably hadn’t helped temper that weird conversation they’d had. Peter’s head is still a little dizzy with it all when he leaves the lab early the next morning. Mr. Stark had left soon after he’d finished his reactor tweaks, but it’s not like Peter was just going to go to bed. 

He scuttles out before anyone can come in and find he’s been there all night, and then he makes his way back to his room to try and forge a little peace with May. He really does hate it when they argue.

So he pops his head into the room just as she’s putting the finishing touches on her makeup and offers to take her out to breakfast. They have savory congee topped with fried eggs and a side of coconut donuts called mandazi at a terrace restaurant overlooking the central mountain pass. It’s another warm, golden day in Wakanda, and they manage to smile at each other and act appropriately without giving voice to each of their disappointments. 

For the next few days, Peter and May exist in a careful détente. They spend time together and reminisce, but they don’t talk about his future plans again. They don’t talk about anything real.

On Friday, she packs up her bags and gets ready to board her jet back to New York.

“You know, I kept your room just like it was,” she says, as they walk out onto the tarmac so she can board. “It’s ready for you whenever you’re ready to come for a visit.”

“Thank you, May,” he says. “I’ll be back soon. I promise. I just … There are some things …”

“It’s ok, honey,” she says, but her tone is sad. Then she grabs him and pulls him into an embrace, hand at his neck, foreheads touching. “I love you, Peter.”

“I love you too, May. I love you too.”

He watches until her plane disappears beyond the horizon and feels guilty at the relief he feels once she is gone from sight. 

Even with May gone, even with a room to himself, Peter can’t sleep. He tries everything he can think of. No caffeine after noon, foregoing electronics before bed, swinging through the surrounding forest until his legs and arms can barely move and he’s just so, so tired. 

He even starts going to a therapist that Dr. Banner recommends, a woman who has experience working with mutants and other powered individuals. Peter senses Mr. Stark’s hand in Dr. Oyemi suddenly having a weekly spot available to see Peter. But even she admits that progress is going to be slow, and made more difficult because his system burns through medications that would help him get to sleep or stay asleep before they have a chance to do anything for him.

So, instead he works in the lab until he can’t keep his eyes open, then curls up on the ratty old couch in corner, clutches the reactor to his chest, and tries to let its gentle pulsing lull him to sleep. It almost always works, initially. But it’s usually no more than a couple hours before the dream finds him again – Tony disintegrating into ash and Peter clutching at the air to try and keep him. He wakes up screaming and clawing, as usual.

The problem is that the reactor has lost its power to comfort him after these nightmares. In those deep hours of night, with no one else around, Peter finds himself questioning himself and his memories.

He has the reactor in his hand, sure. But all that tells him is that Tony probably isn’t dead, wherever he is. But doesn’t the fact that he has it now indicate that all the rest is a dream? Did they really reverse the snap? Or would he find, if he searched the bedrooms in the wing the Avengers have commandeered, that their lost friends are still lost, and that Peter’s plan failed?

But he can’t do that, so instead he makes coffee and tries to work, as much as he can, until the sun rises and Mr. Stark wanders into the lab and greets him, at which point Peter practically melts into the floor in relief that it all wasn’t a dream after all.

The end result of all this is that he gets maybe a couple hours of sleep each night, on good nights when he doesn’t just say fuck it and determine to stay up all night. Even the exhaustion is better than the dreams followed by the creeping doubt.

Then one day he’s going for a swing and, even though his spidey senses warn him in time, he feels like he blacks out for just a split second and face plants into the bark. He has to limp his way back to the capital complex.

Luckily, Clint is the only one to see him with his face dripping with blood, and he makes Peter sit down at the breakfast bar while he cleans and patches the wound above his right eye and sets his nose back into place with a painful, sickening snap.

All the while he talks about this show Dog Cops that apparently premiered here, but had never been created in Peter’s version of things.

“Seriously? You’ve never seen Dog Cops?” Clint asks as he applies iodine to some scrapes along Peter’s cheek. Bark, as it turns out, not soft. “Oh, you’re going to love it. In this last episode, Lt. Fluffy and Mr. Whiskers take on the Lost Bones Gang. I’m so jealous you get to see it for the first time.”

“Sounds great, man,” Peter says, wincing a little. “Hey, you aren’t gonna tell anybody about this, right? I mean, it’ll heal up in a couple hours, so if you could just …”

“Sure, George of the Jungle. I’m not a snitch. But whatever made you face plant, you might want to deal with it? Like, you don’t want to slam into a Doom Bot or something like that. Unlike trees, they fight back.”

“Right, yeah,” Peter says. Clint adds a couple more Band-Aids to the scrapes on his cheek. “I’m working on it.”

So Peter is banged up and loopy from lack of sleep, and he has to hide from all of the other Avengers for most of the evening so he doesn’t have to explain his bruised face. He is maybe not in the best frame of mind to think clearly and thoughtfully about what to do.

That truly is the only explanation for how he finds himself outside of Mr. Stark’s room at 1 a.m., balling up his hoodie to use as a pillow and laying down in front of the door so he can press his ear gently to the wood. 

He focuses his senses. Within the room, he can hear Mr. Stark’s gentle, steady breathing while he sleeps, and beneath that the delicate thumping of his heartbeat. It’s already so much better than the counterfeit heartbeat of the reactor. He feels himself drifting off  – eyes heavy and body warm and peaceful.

He figures no one’s coming by at this time of night, and his spidey senses will wake him up before there’s any chance of Mr. Stark emerging from his room. Content in that knowledge, Peter falls deeply asleep.

He wakes up seven hours later when his head thunks against the carpeted floor as Mr. Stark opens his door. _Shit._ Turns out Peter’s spidey senses do not work when he knows someone presents no danger. Because of course they don’t. They don’t realize that Peter might actually die of embarrassment.

When he looks up from a jumble on the floor, Peter sees Mr. Stark looking down at him, head quirked to one side in confusion as he takes in everything. Peter can tell his hair is mussed, and he had the imprint of the folds of his hoodie on his cheek. He truly is in the shit now.

“Did you … Kid, did you sleep here last night?” Mr. Stark’s own voice is rough with sleep and concern.

“What?” Peter says, struggling desperately to modulate his tone down from the high, panicked creak it wants to come out in. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why, why would I sleep here, sir? No, I, um, I had this idea last night, but when I came to ask you about it, you were asleep. So I just thought I’d wait around and, well, I guess I must have dozed off for a few minutes. But, anyway. Yeah. I just ... Just wanted to run something by you.” 

Mr. Stark narrows his eyes at Peter. He is so, so very bad at lying. 

“And what did you want to talk to me about, Pete?”

“Ummmm...”

“Take your time. Really. No pressure.”

“Aunt May’s birthday?” 

“Uh-huh. What about it?”

“Well, I was thinking you could lend me the jet and I could surprise her in New York, maybe set up a party for her, something really fancy, you know?” 

“That sounds great, Pete. We can definitely do that.”

“Great sir. That’s fantastic. Thank you.”

“And May’s birthday is in …”

“Um, June?”

“That’s perfect. It’s really good to get a solid eight months start on these sort of things. Can’t be too prepared.”

Of course Mr. Stark knows that he is full of shit. It’s not even a remotely good cover. But he isn’t saying anything to contradict Peter. Just smiling down at him with that smirk of his that says _“I’ve got your number, kid, but I’m not gonna call it just yet.”_

He offers a hand to Peter and pulls him up to his feet, reeling him in just a little too close for comfort. Mr. Stark has always been tactile with him.

“You know if something’s bothering you, you can tell me, right kid?” he says, breath ghosting over Peter’s cheek as he speaks. 

“Of course, sir,” Peter replies with his heart in his throat. “But I’m totally fine. Just wanted to get that sorted. Oh, look at the time. I promised Bucky I’d meet him for training soon. I’ll see you later, sir.”

And then he backs away as quickly as possible, unable to pull his eyes away from Mr. Stark’s face, but desperate to get away.

The problem with getting a solid seven hours of sleep is that, now that his body realizes he can have such a luxury, it wants more. Peter hides out in his room for most of the day, trying to work on a new suit design, but nodding off whenever he so much as blinks his eyes, then jerking awake in a panic.

Finally, he gives in around six. Maybe with the sun still up, he thinks, he’ll be able to actually get some rest. He keeps the curtains open wide to let in the golden hour light, and curls up on his side, the reactor glowing blue in his open palm. He watches it, and works to visualize himself outside of Mr. Stark’s door, listening to his breathing and his heartbeat. He’s fine. Everyone’s fine. They’re all together now, and Thanos didn’t win. He slips into sleep.

And then he wakes with a scream, fists flailing out at ghosts. The taste of ash in his mouth mixes with the salt from the tears streaming down his face. How could he think they’d won? Surely this all has to be some kind of trick? When he considers, which reality is most likely? That half the world is dead, or that he managed to get everyone back? He has to … He has to be sure.

When he stands in front of Mr. Stark’s door again, he’s shaking and afraid to knock. Surely the possibility that Mr. Stark is on the other side is better than the certainty that he isn’t that could come if Peter decides to knock. Why does he keep doing this to himself? He thunks his head against the door instead in defeat, and a second later it’s flung open.

Peter nearly collapses into Mr. Stark’s arms when he opens the door, incandescently grateful that he’s there to do so, but so, so overwrought.

“Peter?” Mr. Stark asks. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

He’s heaving in the man’s arms.

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t.”

“Slow down Peter. You’re alright.”

Mr. Stark is rubbing a hand slowly up and down his spine in the most comforting way. He keeps doing it until Peter catches his breath, and the shuddering stops.

“Now, tell me what’s going on.”

“I had a nightmare, and I couldn’t remember if it was real or not,” Peter says quickly, speaking directly into Mr. Stark’s t-shirt. “I just had to check. To be sure you were really here.”

“Oh my god, kid,” Tony says, squeezing him tighter. “It’s ok. I’m right here.”

“I … Can I sleep here tonight?” He asks, stepping away after probably too long spent enjoying the way Mr. Stark keeps rubbing his back. “I can take the couch, maybe? It’s just that it helps when I have a nightmare if I can see that it isn’t real. That you’re not … That you’re here.”

Mr. Stark gives him a soft, sad look, and Peter is afraid for a moment that he is about to tell him no.

“C’mon kid. The bed’s a California king. Enough room for both of us.” 

He wraps a hand around Peter’s wrist and tugs him toward the bed. Peter feels exhausted relief as he allows himself to be led. He pulls his shirt up off over his head, but leaves on his sweat pants. They’re comfortable enough. When he glances over at Mr. Stark, the man’s got one eyebrow raised in question.

“I get hot at night,” Peter says defensively.

He slips under the covers on one side of the bed. The sheets are cool, a ridiculously high thread-count Egyptian cotton that feels like heaven against Peter’s skin. Mr. Stark gets in on the other side, flicking off the bedroom lights and settling on his side so he can look at Peter. He’s right about the size of the bed. There are at least four feet between them. He reaches out and runs his thumb under Peter’s left eye where he’s sure the skin in stained a faint purple, accentuated in the soft moonlight. 

“You need some sleep,” he says, withdrawing his hand carefully. “Goodnight, kid.”

“Goodnight, Mr. Stark,” Peter says.

He’s cocooned in the sheets and blankets and he can feel the slight vibrations in the mattress when Mr. Stark breaths in and out. He focuses, and finds the man’s heartbeat, faster than it should be, maybe, but consistent. Between one beat and the next, Peter is asleep.

 

* 

When Tony wakes up, he’s overwarm, and the sun shining through his windows is far lower than it should be. Usually, when he sleeps at all, Tony is up with the sun. He feels more rested than he has in recent memory. He goes to stretch, but finds his motions constricted by another body pressed firmly against his back.

Then last night’s events flood back into his addled brain. It’s Peter who came to his room last night in hysterics, Peter who he let sleep in his bed and Peter who is now pressed against him so tightly that Tony can feel his stomach move up and down with each deep breath he takes. He has both arms wormed around Tony’s chest and one leg thrown over his hip and curled down around his ankle, like he’s a very cuddly squid.

Peter’s skin is sleep-warmed and soft to the touch, and the chest he presses against Tony’s back is deliciously solid. When he breaths in and out, the little huffs of air ruffle the short hairs on Tony’s neck like a caress.

Tony says a silent thanks to the heavens that he ended up as the little spoon in this scenario, because as mortifying as it is that he is rock hard and ready from action just from a little cuddling, it would be infinitely worse if he and Peter’s positions were reversed. Or … Nope. His body gives a little involuntary twitch before Tony shuts that shit down. _The one with the higher brain function is in charge here boys,_ he tells his offending body parts. _Get used to it._

He doesn’t want to wake the kid up. Peter really does seem to need sleep desperately. Tony’s seen him struggling for the past couple weeks, but he hadn’t realized how bad things really were. Bad. They were very, very bad. But maybe a good night’s sleep will have helped. Now, though, Tony needs a long, cold, shower and to have a nice little chat with his conscience. And he can’t really do any of that while in bed with Peter.

He tries to gently extricate himself from Peter’s embrace only to find that the sticky pads of the kid’s fingers and toes have attached themselves to his skin and _Fuck. Fuck._  There is no part of that that should be hot. And yet …

Tony tries again, maybe a little too forcefully, to tug Peter’s hand away from where it has adhered to his chest, just below where the reactor is settled. The hand does not budge, but Peter does pull him in even closer in protest.

“Hmm … Tony,” he murmurs softly. 

And, ok, maybe it is a good thing that the kid doesn’t make a habit of calling him by his first name because shit. Ok, he really needs to shut this down.

He clears his throat loudly, and tries to pull away from Peter again. He feels the second the kid wakes up, because his entire body goes tense.

“Morning kid,” Tony says, shooting for nonchalance. “How’d you sleep?”

“Huh?” Peter says, his voice thick with sleep. He pulls away from Tony completely, fingers and toes detaching with a slight tickling sensation. “Oh man, I’m sorry Mr. Stark. I, um, I guess I’m a bit of a bed hog. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Tony says, slipping out of bed as soon as Peter has completely released him. He resolutely does not look back to see what Peter looks like when he’s just woken up. The images his imagination supplies are damning enough.

“I just gotta …” Tony says, pointing to the en suite. “Why don’t you get dressed and meet me in the kitchen? I’ll make you some breakfast.”

Then he beats a cowardly retreat to the bathroom where he takes a quick, freezing shower instead of the long one he had planned, and pops out a few minutes later, dressed and with his, er, situation mostly under control, to find Peter still shirtless, but at least more conscious and sitting on the edge of the bed. His hair is a mess of curls, and it is adorable. Goddammit.

“Breakfast?” Peter asks him, hopefully. 

“Sure kid,” Tony says. “Breakfast.”

In the kitchen, Tony puts a pot of coffee on to brew and then starts separating eggs and whipping egg whites to make his pancakes extra fluffy while Peter settles himself at the breakfast bar to watch him.

“I didn’t know you could cook,” he says. “I figured you were exclusively a restaurant or takeout guy.”

“Pancakes and bacon is literally the only meal I have ever learned to make adequately,” Tony replies absently, trying to gauge when the whites have reached maximum fluffiness. “I figured it was good to have something impressive to make for mornings after …”

He stops dead, realizing too late what he’s said and glancing at Peter who is smirking, but flushing a very lovely shade of pink. He still has not put on a shirt. And what the fuck is that about? Is the kid allergic to clothes all of a sudden? It’s like he doesn’t realize that Tony is a monster who cannot be trusted with the sight of his naked chest. Not at all.

Determinedly Tony averts his gaze and goes to pour coffee for Peter and himself. He adds milk to Peter’s cup and sets it front of the kid, which earns him a quiet thanks.

When he’s adding chocolate chips to his batter, Nat wanders into the kitchen. 

“Are you cooking?” she asks incredulously.

“Pancakes,” Peter tells her. “And bacon.”

“If we’ve slipped into an alternative reality,” Nat says. “Tell me after I’ve eaten breakfast.”

She joins Peter at the counter and steals a sip of his coffee.

“Hey,” Tony snaps at her. “Leave the kid’s stuff alone. I’ll get you a cup of your own.”

He gives her one of Thor’s tiny, useless novelty mugs as punishment. This one has a teddy bear and hearts on it and says “I Love you Beary Much.” Thor is a little too enthusiastic about puns.

She snorts at his pettiness, but takes the mug anyway.

Slowly but surely the scents of coffee and bacon lure most of the rest of the team out of their rooms, and Tony starts flipping pancakes, in between whipping up more batter for a second round, because he’s going to need it.

A little of the guilt and worry he feels fades away as he bumps hips with Bruce as he makes tea and laughs at one of Sam’s jokes. Wanda has her chin resting on Peter’s shoulder sleepily and is stealing bites of pancake from his plate as Clint and Phil sneak in guiltily and try to pretend they aren’t coming from the same room. Tony decides to let them have their illusions.

Standing by the oven, watching his pancakes bubble, Tony thinks that right here, right now, he wouldn’t change a thing.

“You ok, Tone?” Bruce asks as he bumps their shoulders together and he steals a strip of bacon directly from the griddle.

“Never better, Brucie, baby,” Tony says. “Never better.”

 

* 

The night he spends sleeping next to Mr. Stark is the most peaceful Peter has had since maybe before he became Spider-Man. He sleeps deeply and wakes up with his body loose and contented the next morning, and wrapped completely around Mr. Stark.

It’s briefly embarrassing, but Tony seems to shrug it off quickly and even makes Peter and the rest of the team breakfast that morning. 

The rest of the day is incredibly productive. Peter feels like his neurons are firing faster or something. He asks Mr. Stark to give him access to the early plans for Jarvis’ AI programming, thinking it might be helpful in his efforts to reverse engineer Vision. The man reminds Peter that he already has access to everything on Mr. Stark’s private server.

“Knock yourself out, kid,” he says. “Let me know if you need any explanations. My notes don’t always run in the direction of full sentences.”

That kind of trust makes Peter’s chest warm. 

He makes a good dent in categorizing the inputs in Jarvis’ initial programming that day, enough to wish he always felt like this, that his mind was always this sharp.

He wants to go back to Mr. Stark’s room that night as well, but he doesn’t dare. Peter figures that, logically, there are only so many times that Mr. Stark will allow him to sleep there before he gets fed up with Peter and refuses him, so it has to be a last resort. He holds himself back for as long as he can, subsiding on cat naps and caffeine.

It’s more than a week later when he finds himself knocking on Mr. Stark’s door again, and when he does, the man doesn’t even question him. He just steps aside and ushers Peter into the room.

“I got a few things to finish up,” he says. “You think you can sleep even with the desk lamp on?”

Peter has already bundled himself up in the blankets on what he has decided is his side of the big bed. 

“Sure, sir,” he says with a giant yawn. “No problem.”

He’s asleep in minutes, and he doesn’t wake up when Mr. Stark flips the lamp off and crawls onto his own side of the bed a couple hours later.

Peter still wakes up with his body wrapped around Mr. Stark.

He doesn’t get breakfast this time, and Mr. Stark rushes to the bathroom as soon as Peter untangles himself, yelling out to Peter over the rushing water of a shower that he’s got a meeting, but maybe they can meet up in the lab later.

Peter feels something cold and heavy settle in his stomach. The last thing he wants is to alienate Mr. Stark. And hey, he’s young. Who needs sleep anyway?

After sleeping a grand total of five hours over the course of a week, he accidentally deletes more than three days of work on the Jarvis code, and of course he didn’t make backups because why would he do something sensible like that?

He slams his fist so hard into a metal workbench that it dents, and Mr. Stark looks up at him in shock.

“What the hell, kid?” he asks.

Peter can’t possibly explain. He waves Mr. Stark off and stalks down to the gym, where he works out now because trees are more dangerous than you’d think. Maybe growing up in New York just left him ill-prepared to deal with nature.

He runs miles on the treadmill, and then retires to his room where he puts on some music and spreads out a few mechanical bits and bobs he found at the marketplace the last time he visited. He doesn’t have any plans for what he’s making, just wants to keep his hands busy and his mind zoned out in a hopes that he might eventually pass out. It never happens, and Peter tries not to scream with the frustration of it all. 

It’s past midnight when he hears a soft knock at his door. It’ll be Wanda, maybe. Or Bucky offering to talk him off the ledge.

But when he opens the door, Mr. Stark is there wearing pajama pants and an old t-shirt and carrying a pillow under his arm.

“Everything ok, sir?” Peter asks. He’s not sure what exactly is going on.

Mr. Stark doesn’t reply immediately, just shoulders his way into Peter’s room and looks around appraisingly. He goes over to Peter’s desk and turns his soldering iron off pointedly.

“Enough is enough,” he says, finally. His tone is tired, and Peter thinks that the crow’s feet around his eyes are more pronounced than usual. “Bed. Now.”

Then he throws the pillow onto Peter’s bed and flips the light off. Mr. Stark tugs at Peter’s wrist until he sits down on the bed, and then joins him. Peter’s bed is significantly smaller than Mr. Stark’s, so the man maneuvers them both so that he’s wrapped loosely around Peter’s body, on hand on his hip, the other scratching soothingly in his hair.

“This is ok, isn’t it, kid?” he asks softly, words vibrating against Peter’s shoulder blades.

“Yeah, sir,” Peter replies, his voice coming out raspy with emotions he can’t quite get a hold on. “This is ok. This is good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll this chapter is sooooo much longer than it should be. I kept telling myself I would go back to edit and pare things down. And then I went back to edit, and ended up adding more. It's all a trap. So I'm sorry. But, hey, I have a chapter total estimate! And kind of a plan for where this thing is going! Exciting stuff, right? Yeah, I'm gonna go with exciting.


	5. Chapter 5

In the end, Tony mostly convinces himself that he’s doing it for Peter. He hates to see the kid suffering, and he’s obviously just barely getting by. It’s not as though it’s an actual hardship to sleep beside him every night. It’s not a sordid thing, he defends himself in his own mind. It isn’t about bodies really at all. It’s about comforting a kid who has been through too much in 24 years. 

If Tony has become the person who helps Peter remember the reality he’s in, then maybe that’s not emotionally healthy. It isn’t. He knows this. But it at least isn’t actively hurting anyone. And it helps both of them, it seems. Tony feels lighter when he notices how much better Peter seems. He’s making progress on his projects, and his fuse is notably longer when dealing with setbacks. He hasn’t damaged any of the lab equipment in weeks, a fact that Shuri has also mentioned with pleasure. When she’d seen what Peter had done to her workbench, she’d threatened to pin him to the wall and study him like an actual spider.

Plus, it helps Tony sleep too. He’s never been what you would call a regular sleeper, and Peter dying hadn’t exactly helped things. But it turns out when you can just reach out a hand and touch the person you worry the most for at any time during the night, your sleep patterns improve exponentially. Whod’ve thunk.

So he makes it a habit. It’s not every night, because neither Peter nor he are really the type of people to sleep every night anyway. When inspiration strikes, it must be followed. But many nights Tony will either pull Peter away from his computer down in the lab where he’s coding furiously to drag him to bed in Tony’s room, or he’ll knock on Peter’s door and end up curling up beside him in that tiny bed. He always asks if it’s ok, and Peter always tells him yes.

He tries to minimize the physical contact, but some nights it seems they both need to just curl close and take and accept that kind of visceral, physical comfort. And as long as he reminds himself that’s all it is, then it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s not a problem, just a challenge.

It doesn’t fix everything. Peter still has nightmares, still wakes up in the middle of the night screaming and clutching at Tony. On those nights he’ll pull him close and Peter will put a hand on the reactor and they’ll lay like that until their breaths sync and Tony can tell Peter has fallen back into sleep.

Well, usually that’s how it works. 

Then one night Peter doesn’t jolt up reaching out for comfort. Instead, he starts brawling. Tony wakes up to a furious growl and a glancing blow to the side of his head. Peter isn’t holding back at all. He swings with his full strength, and Tony has to duck away quickly, falling off of the bed and rolling a couple feet away.

“Peter,” he shouts. “Peter wake up!”

But there is no sign of him being heard. On the bed, Peter is thrashing, and it looks almost as though he’s having a stroke. His head is jerking back and forth violently. But Tony can’t get close because Peter’s too strong. Shit, the kid could lay him out with one good blow.

Tony stands, cracks his neck to one side and then the other. Then he takes a deep breath and concentrates on visualizing his gauntlets forming around his hands. Like good little minions, the nanites flow out of the reactor and shape themselves to his desire.

“Okay, let’s do this,” he mutters to himself.

He launches himself back onto the bed, straddling Peter’s calves with his legs to hold him as steady as he can manage, though Peter’s flailing nearly knocks him off again. Then he uses the full force of the gauntlets, grabbing Peter’s hands and forcing them down toward the mattress. It takes significantly more power than he anticipates, and at one point, Tony loses his grip and Peter clocks him in his left eye.

“Fuck,” he hisses. That hurts like a motherfucker, and his head feels worryingly light and floaty. He absolutely cannot pass out right now. “Peter, snap out of it.”

Tony braces himself and grabs hold of Peter’s flailing wrists again, this time managing to pin them to the mattress by maximizing the backthrust on the gauntlets.

“Come one kid,” he says, shaking Peter a little. He doesn’t want to be too rough, but he needs to get through to him. “Come back to me, Pete.”

He gives the kid another shake, and a second later Peter’s eyes fly open wide and begin searching the room jerkily for threats. 

“Wha…” he cries out. Tony can feel him start to tremble in panic. 

“Hey, hey. You’re fine, kid. We’re both fine.”

But Peter doesn’t seem to really comprehend what he’s saying. He struggles out from under Tony and moves to the far side of the mattress, curling his knees into his chest and trying to meld with the headboard so that he is as small as he can possibly be. He’s sniffling into his knees and he looks so vulnerable that Tony’s chest aches with it.

He shuffles back to the foot of the bed on the opposite side to give Peter plenty of space to breathe. Then he slumps down on his knees and hangs his head into his hands. The only thing connecting them is the twisted mass of sheet and blanket, like and emotionally fucked up yin and yang.

Tony waits until Peter’s jerky sobs fade into quieter catches of his breath before he speaks.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Peter shakes his head violently. But then after a few more minutes of heavy silence he seems to change his mind.

“We were fighting him, back on Titan,” he says, voice rough from the crying and the screaming. “Usually my dreams, they start after. But this time we were right in the middle of the fight. It felt so real. I almost had the gauntlet off, but I wasn’t strong enough …”

His voice breaks at that, going all gurgly and watery, like he just might start crying again. God, the crying is killing him.

“Goddammit,” Peter whispers to himself. “Why am I never strong enough?”

“Hey,” Tony says. He tries to make his words an embrace because he’s keeping a respectful distance from Peter right now even if he does want nothing more than to bundle him up and hold him as close as physically possible. “Hey, that’s not how it was. Maybe that’s how it was in your dream, but they lie, Pete. Take it from an old veteran of the night terror. Dreams are lying sonsofbitches.” 

Peter just shrugs helplessly and buries his face in his knees again. Tony just closes his eyes and listens to his shaky breathing fill the room. There should be something he can do, some fix for this, but he can’t think of what it might be. What helped Tony, when he was going through the worst of his post-Chitari breakdown, was when Pepper would allow him to pretend that nothing was wrong. When she would bring him coffee and kiss him on the temple and remind him that he promised to take a look at the dishwasher making that weird sound or the television that kept switching channels on its own. Most of the time she didn’t do that. Most of the time she wanted to talk about feelings and healthy coping mechanism. But sometimes she could see he was at the end of his rope and just … played along. It had been nice. Not healthy or healing, certainly. Nothing Tony wants ever is. But it had been nice. 

“Did I hurt you?” Peter’s small voice interrupts his moment of self-flagellation.

“Hm?” Tony prods gently at his left eye. It’s tender and feels a little puffy. Yeah, he’s gonna have a shiner. “This is nothing, kid. I’ve had worse.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …”

“And I probably should have let you work through it instead of going all Iron Man and putting my face in front of your fist,” he says. “It’ll be fine, kid. Really not your fault.”

“But I …”

“Don’t argue with me, kid,” Tony says, trying his best to put on a stern voice even though he feels as soft and wrung out as he has ever felt in his life. “Why don’t you go and take a shower? Hot water might do you some good. I’ll go scrounge us up some breakfast. Sound okay?”

“Isn’t it too early for that?” Peter asks, softly.

“Kid, it’s practically morning. You don’t wanna get a reputation for sloth, do you?”

“I dunno,” Peter shrugs, eyes popping up over his knees to stare at Tony as he rolls off the bed and stretches. “Sloths are pretty cute.”

Tony can’t help but smile at the return of even light sassing from Peter.

“Well, you got me there, Pete. You would make the most adorable sloth ever, hands down. You wanna try and sleep some more?”

“No,” Peter shakes his head. “A shower sounds good.”

Slowly, he moves from the bed to the en suite, and when Tony can hear the water running, he heads out to the kitchen where he fixes a pot of very strong coffee and makes some toast. Morning isn’t actually all that far off. It’s 4 a.m., and the sun should be rising in a couple hours. He brings back a tray of coffee, toast, and some assorted fruit to Peter’s room. When he gets there, Peter is dressed in shorts and an oversized t-shirt and is fluffing his hair vigorously with a towel. When he removes it, his hair is sticking up in every possible direction, like a very messy halo.

“Breakfast is served,” Tony says, setting the tray down on the desk and handing Peter a cup of coffee.”

“Ohmygod thank you,” Peter says, holding the cup close to his face and inhaling. “I love you,” he whispers, and Tony’s heart give a violent jerk before his brain comes back to reality and he realizes that Peter is whispering sweet nothings to the coffee.

“Hey kid,” he says, snapping to get Peter’s attention. “Buy it dinner before you make sweet, sweet love to it, huh?”

“Mr. Stark, coffee and I are in a very committed relationship.”

“Oh, right. How could I make such a mistake?”

“Wishful thinking?” Peter replies with a soft smile. “She loves me best. You should just learn to accept it.”

“Sure kid,” Tony says with a chuckle. “Whatever you have to tell yourself.” 

Tony slumps as gracefully as he can onto the desk chair while Peter curls up on the end of the bed with his cup. He accepts a slice of buttered toast when offered the plate.

“Ok, Pete. Here’s the question of the day. I’ve been working on some plans for more efficient interplanetary travel, now that that seems like that’s going to be a necessary thing. So, if it were up to you, whaddya think? Full-on Star Gate or old-school hyperdrive so we can go all Han and Chewbacca on the universe?”

“Wait …” Peter asks. “Which one of us is the Wookie in this scenario?”

And they’re off. It’s one of those conversations that strikes a perfect balance between deep, theoretical science and pop culture back-and-forth that Tony loves. Before he knows it, he’s up from the chair, pacing back and forth across Peter’s floor while he tosses an orange from hand-to-hand and they hash out what it would take to make a Star Trek-style transporter.

He’s so distracted that when a knock come at the door, he forgets who’s room it is in frustration at being interrupted and throws the door open.

“What?” he huffs in irritation.

The Winter Soldier’s eyes go wide as saucers when Tony opens the door. His hand is still lifted as though to knock on the now-open door.

“Ummm …” Barnes says. “I was just looking for Peter?" 

And it comes crashing down on Tony’s head how weird this all must look. He’s in pajama pants and a white tank, and Peter is curled up on the bed in a nest of blankets. Tony Stark is an idiot.

“Hey Bucky,” Peter leans over off the bed to give a little wave at Barnes. “What’s up?” 

“Hey Boss,” Bucky says, flicking his eyes between Tony and Peter, not even attempting subtlety. “Everything … Ok in here?”

“You want something specific here, Barnes?” Tony says, figuring that the best way to avoid too much suspicion is to act like everything is normal. “’Cause we’re kinda working on solving an interplanetary transportation issue at the moment.”

“Right.” Barnes says. “Sure. Um, Steve decided that we need to get the team together to do some training? He sent me to get Peter. Actually, he’s probably looking for you in your room …”

Tony winces.

“What time are we meeting?” Peter asks, rolling out of bed and untangling himself from the blanket.

“Oh-eight hundred,” Barnes says. “I should tell Steve you’re in?”

“Yeah, Buck, we’ll be there.”

“Good. Now I gotta go try and not die waking Nat up.”

Peter snickers.

“Good luck with that.”

“Thanks, Boss. See you in a bit.”

After Barnes leaves, Tony turns guiltily to Peter, who’s rifling through his drawers for training gear.

“Sorry about that, kid,” he says, feeling his face heat. At least he’d kept it together while Barnes was here.

“About what, Mr. Stark?” Peter asks, curiously, looking at Tony over his shoulder. 

“Um …”

Of course Tony has been far too deep in his own head. It would never occur to Peter that Barnes might think something was going on between the two of them. Why would it? That isn’t their relationship at all.

“For keeping you up with my space travel bullshit,” Tony improvises. “You sure you up for training today?” 

“Yeah, absolutely, sir.”

Tony nods.

“Ok, then. I better go change. See you in the gym?”

Peter waves him out. 

“See you, sir.” 

*

When Peter walks into the gym, most of the Avengers have already assembled. The space feels light and airy, painted in white with a floor of light grey padded mats. There’s a roped-off corner with the basic equipment, but most of it is open, designed for sparring. The high ceiling is dotted with skylights to let in sun, and there’s a gantry running along the edge of the walls. Peter has never spent a lot of time in this room. It was nice of T’Challa to provide them with a space to practice as a group, but Peter’s always been more of an outdoor-exercise kind of guy. He’d rather go for a run, or a swing.

He walks up to slap Bucky on the shoulder in greeting. The solider is kitted out in his leather armor, his metal arm oiled to gleaming. He gives Peter a slit-eyed look, and Peter flushes under his scrutiny. He knows he won’t get away with not talking about Bucky finding Mr. Stark in his room, but he can hope, right? Also, he deeply hopes that Bucky will keep his mouth shut. He’s a spy, he’s good at that. But Peter doesn’t know yet how open he is with the Captain, now he’s back. That definitely counts as something he doesn’t want Rogers knowing about.

He doesn’t even know how he’ll explain it to Bucky, who has become one of his closest friends. It has become a habit. It has become a horrible, wonderful, maddening habit. To Peter, it’s like he’s inexplicably decided to take up cocaine in a cliché of a quarter-life crisis. That’s what it feels like to spend nearly every night in Tony Stark’s bed and have it mean nothing – absolutely nothing – in the morning. _What goes up, must come down,_ Peter reminds himself.

It’s subtle, but Mr. Stark is different now. They’ve become so physically close, but Peter has noticed him keeping his distance during the days. They work in the same lab space, but they don’t really talk. Not the way they used to before. This morning is the most they’ve talked in weeks. As much as Peter prizes their nights together, as much of a comfort as it is to have him close, to not have to worry about his safety or question which reality he’s woken up in, Peter thinks he’d give all that up if they could only go back to the way they were five years ago.

Peter tries to put all of that out of his mind. Surely some physical exertion will do him good. While the others mingle and chatter, Peter leans against the wall to stretch. Mr. Stark, typically, is the last to walk in the room. He’s dressed in sweats and a t-shirt with bright magenta-lensed smart glasses on that almost cover up the black eye that Peter gave him this morning. 

“Jesus, Tony, what happened to you?” Captain Rogers asks as he joins the group.

“Ran into a door,” Mr. Stark deadpans. “Teach me to read and walk at the same time. So, Stars and Stripes, what’s the plan now that you’ve got us all here at the ass crack of dawn?”

“It’s 8 o’clock, Tony. I think you’ll survive.”

“Cool it with the sweet talk in front of the children, sweetheart, you’ll make me blush.”

Captain Rogers rolls his eyes, then turns away from him to face the group.

“It’s been too long since we’ve been able to fight together as a team,” he booms out. “We need to be battle ready. Thanos is gone, but other threats will come. They always do. So we need to train.”

Peter barely stops himself from rolling his eyes.

“So what did you have in mind, Capsicle?” Mr. Stark asks.

“We were thinking capture the flag,” Bucky pipes in, going to stand beside the Captain.

Bucky and Captain Rogers pick teams, and it’s hardly surprising the groupings they end up with. Bucky gets Peter, Wanda, T’Challa and Sam. The Captain gets Mr. Stark, Barton, Natasha and Thor. Rhodey’s off on another military mission and Dr. Banner has decided to sit this one out, as the gym is not Hulk-proof like the one they have at the Avengers’ facility in New York. He sits down in a corner, obliging the Captain by observing, but Peter sees him pull a paperback out of his back pocket. _Restaurant at the End of the Universe_. A solid choice. 

They hang towels from either end of the gantry, and then face off in the center of the room.

“Alright, Avengers,” the Captain says, and it’s so cheesy, but a thrill runs down Peter’s spine at it because, sue him, he’s never had Captain America call him an Avenger before. That serious, duty and country voice usually grates on him, but for an instant Peter is 8 years old in his bedroom with Ned creating a secret handshake and pretending he’s getting inducted into the Avengers. It is awesome.

Peter bounces on the balls of his feet and flicks glances at Wanda and Bucky. Then the Captain gives the signal to begin, and it’s an all-out melee. Bucky immediately runs at Steve, aiming the meat of his metal shoulder at the center of his shield. Vibranium meets vibranium in a violent clang that echoes through the room.

The rest of them quickly pair off, Sam meeting Mr. Stark in a flash of wings and burst of thrusters in the air above the rest of the battle while Wanda pursues Clint as he climbs toward the gantry. T’Challa slashes at Thor with his claws while ducking low to avoid the heft of Stormbreaker. And that leaves Peter with … The Black Widow. Of course.

“Hello, Spiderling,” she says with an evil smile that sends a chill through Peter’s body.

“Oh, jeeze, Ms. Black Widow, ma’am, don’t hurt me,” he says, holding his hands up and putting on his best nervous high-school voice.

“Ma’am?” Natasha says, voice darkening further. And, ok, Peter can admit that his smart mouth occasionally gets him into trouble, and this just might be one of those time. 

She lunges at him, striking out with her wrist tasers. Peter dodges, attempting a leg sweep to send her down, but she jumps out of the way and tackles him, getting an arm around his wind pipe. _Damn, she’s fast,_ Peter thinks as he throws her off and they trade and parry a few punches. He lands a good one that sends her flying back with a soft “oomph,” but she doesn’t stay winded for long, running at full-speed toward him before she leaps at him and wraps her thighs around his neck, taking him down to the mat in a picture-perfect hurricanrana that Peter can’t help but admire even as all of the air is suddenly removed from his lungs. 

Okay, screw this. There’s no reason he should play the Widow’s game. Hand-to-hand has never been Peter’s forte. He has the damn web shooters for a reason. 

He wriggles out of Natasha’s hold and gives her a little two-fingered salute.

“It’s been a pleasure, ma’am, but I can see you’re tied up,” he says, thwipping his wrist and sending a spray of webbing around her ankles. Then he gets a running start and catapults himself upwards, sending a strand of webbing up to hook on the gantry railing so he can flip himself up and away from the Widow.

Before he can even get his bearings, Widow has slashed her bonds with a boot knife and is shouting.

“I need a boost, Cap!” she calls, not even pausing for acknowledgement before she runs toward Captain Rogers, who holds his shield at an angle so she can boost herself off of it into a backflip that allows her to grab ahold of the gantry railing and pull herself up. Peter has already started running down the length of the scaffolding towards the enemy flag, but she catches up and tackles him.

Peter manages to buck her off, webbing her wrists this time as she lunges. This is not as productive as he had hoped. He flicks his eyes around the room. Wanda is going red in the face as she tries to remove her hands from a mass of something that Clint has used to stick them together … Putty Arrow? T’Challa succeeds in getting Stormbreaker out of Thor’s hands only to be pulled down to the mat because, of course, no one can wield the damn thing but him. Bucky and the Captain are still going blow for blow, Bucky smiling smugly through a mouthful of blood where his lip has been split.

And … Ooh. Sam comes whizzing by, Mr. Stark close on his heels.

“Hey Sam!” Peter calls out. “Swapsies?”

“You got it, Spider Dude!” he responds.

“Catch!”

And then in perhaps the boldest move of his superhero career, he picks up a temporarily-subdued Black Widow and tosses her over the railing into Sam’s waiting arms. The glare she gives him definitely spells trouble for later.

Then Peter sends a web out to the ceiling and swings out, letting go at the top of his arc so that he lands with a whump on the back of Mr. Stark’s suit.

“Oh my god, are you Iron Man?!?” Peter exclaims in high falsetto. “I am your biggest fan. Can I get an autograph? Or maybe a souvenir?”

He flips open the control panel on the back of the suit and starts digging around in it.

“Knock it off, Underoos,” Mr. Stark says, frustration filtering through the mechanized voice-modulator in the suit.

“But sir, you are always encouraging me to learn through experimentation, aren’t you?” he says, and keeps searching for the proper wires so he can take control of the suit. On the other end of the room, Natasha has freed herself from his webbing, and has Sam in a nasty-looking chokehold, though he is still airborne.  

“Okay, kid, that’s enough.”

Mr. Stark gives a violent jerk to try and dislodge Peter, but he seems to have forgotten about the sticky pads of his fingers and toes. Peter will not be moved. Until, of course, a great echoing boom moves through the room like a physical force. T’Challa’s suit has rebounded a strike from Stormbreaker, and it knocks both Mr. Stark and Sam out of the air. Peter and Mr. Stark go down hard, with a heavy thud and Peter rolls off the back of the suit. The two of them lay side by side, panting.

“Shit,” Mr. Stark pants. “I am getting too old for crap like this.”

“Eh, you still got a little fight left in you, sir,” Peter says. He rolls his body up with a groan and, once he’s upright, offers and hand to Mr. Stark, and pulls him up. “Don’t you?” 

“Why don’t you come a little closer and see, kid?”

“Actually, I think I gotta get going,” Peter says. “Rain check?”

He extends a wrist to thwip away in the direction of the enemy flag, but Mr. Stark caches him by the ankle. Normally, Peter would easily be able to shake him off, but Mr. Stark uses the full power of the suit to keep him back and Peter goes flying again, rolling in a wild somersault over the man’s head and hits the mats again hard.

Around him, Peter can see that none of his team members have made progress towards the flag, too caught up in their own individual battles. This won’t do. On the upper level, Wanda is free from her bonds at last and has transformed most of Clint’s quiver full of arrows into balloon animals. Not too busy then.

“Hey Wands!” he calls, pulling himself up again and spinning on his heel to aim a punch at Mr. Stark’s chest. The man grunts, but takes the hit easily. The nanites are better at absorbing the impact of a hit than the old metal suits were.

“What, Pietro?”

“You know that really old movie I made you watch …”

“Don’t you dare, kid,” Mr. Stark warns, shaking a finger at him like a scolding auntie. 

Peter smirks.

“The Three Amigos?” He shouts at Wanda, grabbing hold of Mr. Stark’s outstretched hand and using it to flip him onto the ground.

“Really?” Mr. Stark huffs, slamming a gauntlet onto the ground in frustration. “Now you’re just being insulting.”

“Pietro,” Wanda says with a smile, putting on a truly terrible Mexican accent. “Are you saying we need a plethora of Avengers.”

“Oh, yes, Wanda,” Peter confirms. “We need a plethora.”

Turning her attention away from Clint, Wanda closes her eyes and floats up toward the ceiling, summoning a red orb in her hands. She flicks it out, like she’s shaking off water, and Peter feels an itchy feeling crawl across his skin. He blinks a couple of times and then turns his head to the left. When he does, he’s staring into perfect copies of his own brown eyes, attached to a perfect copy of Peter himself. The copy blinks at him, in an echo of Peter’s movements. He tips his head to one side and then the other, and it’s like looking into a mirror as the copy does the same. Gotta hand it to her, Wanda does great work.

“Wicked,” he and his double whisper simultaneously.

“Can you people seriously not stay out of my head for two goddamn minutes!” He hears Clint growl from above. Looking around, he sees all the other members of his team have similar copies.

Peter turns to Mr. Stark and smiles wide.

“Well, Mr. Stark,” he says along with his double, with a disturbing surround-sound quality. “Can you tell which is which?”

Then he darts to the right, his copy to the left, turning a midair flip and throwing his webs up once again toward the gantry. He passes Thor, who is flying through the air after an attempt to send Stormbreaker flying into T’Challa, and instead going right through his double and into the wall with a loud crack.

Sam and his double are flying circles around Natasha, making her cry out in frustration and Clint is sending putty arrows through Bucky’s double, giving Steve a direction to charge. Peter thinks he’s home free, and then he hears the unmistakable whirr of the Iron Man engines, and feels a heavy metal hand on his shoulder, grasping at this t-shirt. He turns back to attempt a mid-air punch, and he and Mr. Stark go barreling end-over-end in an aerial roll that ends with Peter flat on his back and Iron Man looming over him.

The mask of his suit fades away, revealing Mr. Stark panting and grinning down at Peter, hair slick with sweat. Peter’s brain buzzes with something heady and dangerous. He can feel his pupils dilating. It’s a good look. He has to get a handle on himself. 

“Nice try, buttercup, but you should never play poker,” Mr. Stark says. “You got way too many tells.”

“Plus you have heat-sensing technology in the suit,” Peter says, groaning at his own stupidity.

“Plus I have heat-sensing technology in the suit,” Mr. Stark agrees, grinning wider. “You gonna stay down, or I gotta make you?”

“No sir, I’ll be good,” Peter says, and Mr. Stark’s entire face twitches unflatteringly. That’s weird. But then he sees something over the hulking shoulder of the Iron Man suit that makes him smile wide. “Just one more thing.”

Mr. Stark cocks an eyebrow at him.

“Made you look?” He tilts his chin to direct Mr. Stark’s eyes, and the man turns around to find Wanda waving the enemy flag from the far side of the gantry, her orb-wielding double still floating up near the ceiling. She claps her hands together and the copies burst and disappear like soap bubbles.

“Damn,” Mr. Stark says. “That is a good trick.”

The man moves slowly off of Peter, the remainder of the suit dissolving back into the reactor. He offers a hand down to Peter and the kid takes it, jumping up. 

“It was a good game, sir,” Peter says, daring to slap him on the back and resisting the urge to let his hand linger on those ropey muscles.

Instead he runs over to Wanda, who is delicately floating down to the ground, and grabs her in a victorious hug, spinning her around. When Bucky, T’Challa and Sam join them, they lift her and carry her off to the locker room, whooping in victory.

 

* 

The training session victory seems to do Peter good. If Tony’s being honest, he’s missed that side of the kid, spouting quips and swinging through the air. He’s been so serious lately, and Tony is beginning to think that it isn’t just trauma and guilt that is causing that. He thinks, perhaps the new, older Peter just is more serious than his 18-year-old corollary. More serious, more capable, more steady. But he’s still Spider-Man. And Spider-Man is meant to do flips and crack wise.

It’s so good to see that Tony starts work on a new Spidey suit for him. He’s disappointed that it took him this long to think of it. Now that they’ve started training it hits him that they’ll have missions soon enough. Coulson’s been holding off, letting them get their bearings as a team again, but soon enough something will come up that SHIELD agents alone can’t handle.

He doesn’t tell Peter what he’s working on, wants it to be a surprise. A gift, like that first suit he made for the kid after seeing the ridiculous get-up he was working with. A hoodie and goggles for Christ’s sake.

He thought he’d be working on it while he and Peter share the lab in companionable silence. They both of them tend to use it later in the day while Shuri is an early riser who gets in and gets her shit done and moves onto other things. But Wanda’s been down in the lab often over the last couple of days, looking over Peter’s shoulder while he works or whispering to him quietly and sending strangely loaded looks in Tony’s direction like he’s done something wrong. Which he hasn’t. At least not recently. At least not that he can remember. 

It’s not that Tony minds the company, he just can’t shake the feeling that he’s an interloper in their business with one another. Unwanted. And that’s not a feeling he’s used to around Peter. One afternoon he walks into the lab to hear raised voices and immediately backtracks to stand outside the door like a fucking coward.

“You still haven’t told him?” Wanda’s accent gets worse when she’s angry. She goes all Eastern Bloc when she’s laying into someone.

“Wands can we not?”

“Do you have any idea what I would give, Pietro? Any idea to have the chance to say it again.”

“I’m trying, Wands,” Peter replies, voice cracking. “You know fucking well I’m trying.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it. You should tell him. You deserve to be happy. I don’t understand how you can just stand there day-in and day-out and not …”

“Stop. Please. You knew …”

“I thought you would come to your senses.”

“This is me coming to my senses! It’s not gonna happen. He doesn’t want …”

“How do you know until …”

“Wanda!” Peter says, voice rising. “Enough. I’ve had a shit morning. It’s turning into a shit day. Can we just have this argument some other time?”

“Fine,” she says. “Fine. Have it your way, you stubborn ass.”

Tony’s heart beats a little quicker when he hears heavy footsteps and then Wanda is stomping past him. She pauses to give him a poisonous look and mutter something at him in Russian, and he puts his hands up in defense.

 Tony waits a few minutes before he enters the room. He clears his throat to announce himself and calls “Hey, kid!” in greeting before settling at his work station.

Peter waves weakly at him in greeting, but continues to stare grimly at his computer, still visibly agitated. Every couple of minutes he huffs or bangs on his computer keyboard a little too hard. The ticks and twitches are making it hard for Tony to concentrate. His mind is far too focused on Peter, only wandering to think back to the conversation he’d eavesdropped on. He should have left. He shouldn’t have stuck around while they talked about Peter’s … Whatever he is. Wanda certainly seems to think Peter should confess his feelings. Tony’s chest twinges at the thought.

It’s not jealousy, exactly. It’s more of the knowledge that when Peter finally settles down with someone it will change the trajectory of his life. And Tony has this pet vision for them that rose up in his head without him ever fully giving it permission to grow there. Him and Peter and the rest of the Avengers together upstate like a big extended family. Maybe start training up a brand new batch of heroes. He’s been hearing interesting things about a girl who showed up in New York and took on MODOK. Something about being able to bend the barriers of reality. And Clint’s been talking up his little protégé for ages, though if you ask Tony it’s nothing but confusing to have two Hawkeyes. Still, they could expand. Maybe go bicoastal.

He’s imagined it so many times, but never without Peter there to help guide things. To help make it better. And he won’t be there if he’s off playing happy families. Deep down, Tony Stark is a selfish jackass. 

Peter huffs one too many times, and Tony stands abruptly, scooting his chair back with an overly-loud screech. Peter jumps and looks over at him.

“You wanna get some lunch, Pete? ‘Cause I think we could both use some grub and maybe a walk.”

“I’m sorta in the middle of …”

“Nope. Grab your coat, Edith. We’re going.”

Ten minutes later, they’re walking through a bustling street filled with food vendors working out of carts or little tents with brightly covered awnings. The sun is warm on Tony’s back. He’s got his sunglasses on and his jacket slug over his shoulder. He bumps Peter with his hip and earns half a laugh in return. It’s a start.

The air smells like grilling meat and mixed spices – cinnamon, garlic, coriander. They pass vendors selling scallion pancakes drizzled with chili oil and peanut sauce, goat shanks roasting over an open-fire spit, fluffy dumplings filled with sticky tahini-laced caramel and topped with sesame seeds. Tony buys a little paper package of candied pumpkin seeds and eyes a stand with sticky rice puddings flavored with tamarind and lychee kept cool on a bed of ice.

“Oh my god,” Peter says, gripping Tony’s arm tight. “Oh my god, it’s still here. C’mon.”

He latches on to Tony’s wrist and tugs him along the street, bobbing and weaving through the thick crowd of people. Tony’s stumbling over his feet when they stop abruptly in front of a little cart with a green and white mandala-patterned awning.

“Ismail!” the kid calls, greeting the stooped old man who is apparently the proprietor of the cart. “Looks like you’re back in business.” 

“It is good to see you Peter,” the man says, giving Peter a smile. “And yes, back to business. With my Magdalene back, it is easier. You know how it is. I should still be retired, but if I stay home she drives me up the wall.” 

Peter laughs. “I’m sure it’s just an adjustment period.”

“Yes,” the proprietor agrees. “I am adjusting to her being in charge again.”

“It’s important to know who the boss is.”

They chuckle together.

“The usual?” the old man asks.

“Yes, please,” Peter says.

“And you, sir?” the old man addresses Tony for the first time.

“Oh, me? I’ll have what he’s having.” 

A few minutes later, they’re served up hamburgers on thick croissant-style buns topped with a thick smear of goat’s cheese and a helping of curried lentils with a side of spiced yam crisps. They find a low wall to lean against and dig in. Peter takes a huge bite, groaning in pleasure as he does so.

“Oh man,” he says through his bite. “This place closed down in my timeline. I have been craving this exact curryburger for three damn years.”

It’s not exactly an attractive look. Peter’s mouth is full, his cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk’s, and he’s talking with his mouth full. And still Tony thinks he’s adorable. God, he’s completely gone on the kid.

Tony redirects his eyes to his little paper basket of food. It looks a bit like a sloppy mess, with the curried lentils oozing out of the sides of the bun, but he bravely picks it up and takes a bite. Damn, the kid was right. There’s the heat from the chili, the complex mix of spices, the cool tang of the goat’s cheese. It’s definitely something craveable.

By his side, Peter is making little pleased sighing noises as he devours his burger in a couple bites. It is distracting to say the least.

“So, kid, how have things been going?” Tony asks when Peter swallows the last bite of his burger. Peter freezes instantly, one finger still between his lips where he’s been licking them of burger juices.

“Ummm,” he says, enlighteningly.

“You just seem a little extra stressed today.”

“I’m fine,” he says. “Really, sir. Everything’s fine.”

“Yeah? And everything’s going ok with the doc? Dr. Oyemi, is it?” He asks as though he didn’t personally hire the woman on T’Challa’s recommendation.

Peter flushes at the mention of the therapist. 

“Or, I guess maybe I shouldn’t ask that …”

“It’s fine,” the kid says with a sigh. “I guess I should be grateful you didn’t just ask her directly.”

Tony winces at that, and there’s not a chance that Peter doesn’t catch it. He gives Tony an incredulous look, eyebrows raised and furrowed together. Tony raises his hands in defense.

“Ok, let’s look at this in a positive light. Now you know you have a very, very ethical therapist. She would not tell me anything for money, position, or power.” 

Peter pinches the bridge of his nose and says nothing for a long minute.

“Fuck it,” he says eventually. “You might actually get it. Dr. Oyemi definitely doesn’t.”

“What’s up?” That was way too easy, but Tony’s not exactly going to stop him if he wants to spill his guts. This is what he wanted.

Peter runs his fingers roughly through his hair so that it sticks up with static and then presses the meat of his palms to his eyes.

“So, ok, she tells me at our session this morning that I need to stop thinking of myself as responsible for saving the world.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Which is fine if you’re just some random guy on the street, but isn’t she supposed to, like, specialize in working with mutants and powered people? So I told her, that’s cool, Dr. O, except last time I literally was responsible for saving the world.” 

“I’m guessing she didn’t like that?” Tony asks.

“She said how did I know that. But apparently ‘A wizard told me so’ is not an acceptable answer? She looked at me like I was crazy, but I’m not crazy. The world is crazy. I have the powers of a genetically modified spider. There are Norse gods paling around with aliens and talking raccoons. We’re working with a different paradigm here. Why is this one thing so hard to accept?”

Tony swallows thickly. He can feel the stress radiating off Peter, and it feels so familiar. He thinks back to himself right after the Chitari attacks, coming up with a new suit design every couple of days and becoming convinced that only he could protect every single person he cared about. It’s too much. It’s too much for anyone and it’s definitely more than he wants Peter to have to deal with ever.

“So … Ok, kid, do you think I could maybe give translating the therapist speak a shot? I don’t wanna overstep here.”

Peter just shrugs, looking defeated as he slumps against the wall. Tony decides to charge ahead. 

“Look, maybe when the good doc says you don’t have to be responsible for saving the world, what she means is that you don’t have to be responsible for saving the world alone? I know you, Pete. You don’t have a problem letting other people do their thing. You’re good at delegating when you’ve got a team around you. But that’s different than accepting that you aren’t the one who’s personally on the line if something goes wrong. I know that. I’ve been that guy.”

They share a long look, and he reaches out to brush a lock of Peter’s hair out his eyes.

“I don’t think you have to absolve yourself of all responsibility to save people, Pete,” he says. “That’s not who you are. I think you just have to know that once you’ve done everything you can, given everything you’ve got, you have people who will be there to step in and help. All you have to do is ask. You know I’ll always be there when you need me, right?” 

“I do know that, Mr. Stark,” Peter says, voice tight with emotion. He turns his face away from Tony, clearly embarrassed by the emotion. But Tony reaches out and turns his face back, thumb caressing his his chin unconsciously.

“Don’t do that,” he says, ignoring the warning sirens in his head telling him he’s going down a dangerous path. “We’re past that.”

It’s a quiet journey back to the capital complex, but it’s comfortable. The two of them walk side by side, occasionally bumping shoulders or elbows.

When they wander into the living room, they find most of the group assembled, with Coulson tapping his foot impatiently while he leans against the fireplace mantle.

“There you are,” the man sighs. 

“Is this an intervention?” Tony asks. “Because I swear, I gave up the hard stuff in the 80s.”

“Guys,” Clint says, popping up from the sofa. “We’re going to Switzerland.”

 

* 

It turns out the World Council is “requesting” the Avengers be present at a ceremony celebrating the restoration in Geneva. They’ll be honored at a formal ceremony followed by a grand ball with dignitaries from around the globe. 

“What, like Cinderella?” Peter asks, confused. Are balls a thing that actually happen outside of the movies? 

“I know it’s a pain, but it’s good PR, and it’ll keep the council off your backs for a couple months at least,” Director Coulson tells them. They’ll fly out together in a couple of days. It seems it’s important to present a united front.

Peter panics a little at the thought of such a formal affair. He’s never been good at that kind of stuff. He’s been able to avoid most of it because of the whole mask, secret identity thing, but it seems like the cat’s out of the bag, and now he gets to deal with this nonsense. He doesn’t even know where to start. 

Well, he did just have a heart-to-heart with Mr. Stark about asking for help when you need it. No time like the present to start. He collapses onto one of the couches between Wanda and Shuri and looks pathetically between the two of them. 

“Help me,” he says with a whimper.

Help comes in the form of a trip to Birnin Zana’s bustling fashion district the next morning. It’s in an older part of the city with narrow, cobbled streets that twist into Labyrinthine patterns. The weather is warm and sunny, but there’s still a hint of morning chill in the air by the time they start off.

Peter is fortified slightly by a creamy coconut latte served over ice that he picks up at a little shop on one of the side streets, but he still leans on Wanda’s shoulder sleepily and pouts in Shuri’s direction.

“Why did we have to start so early?” he whines.

“Because, Spider Boy,” she replies, looking him up and down, “You are going to need a lot of help.”

Peter fidgets self consciously with the hem of his flannel shirt. He can’t exactly defend himself against that. And there’s no doubt that Shuri has excellent fashion sense, so he’ll just have to grit his teeth and make it through this so that he doesn’t embarrass himself on a very, very public stage. 

“It’s Spider-Man,” he protests weakly.

“I’m finding that a little hard to believe at the moment,” she says with a shrug, and leads the way into what looks like a very high-end shop selling clothes made exclusively in black and white.

Peter looks ridiculous in everything that Shuri and Wanda pick out for him to try on. 

“Why does your body look lumpy?” Wanda asks at one point after Peter has squeezed himself into a black blazer with crisp white scrollwork along the lapels. “Are you trying to make yourself look lumpy?”

“My body is just like that,” Peter says, feeling deeply self-conscious. “I can’t help it.”

“Let’s try somewhere else?” Shuri suggests.

The next place they visit is painfully hip.  The walls are covered in graffiti, and the music blaring out of the speakers is a throbbing EDM. Peter tries on a suit in a pink floral pattern that makes him look sickly and washed out and a red and blue pinstripe that is just eye-wateringly bright. He hangs his head. 

“Maybe this is just all too modern for you,” Shuri says. “You need something more classic. C’mon Spider Boy. I have an idea.”

Her idea leads them to a vintage shop in one of the back alleys of the district, the street so narrow that if Peter were to stretch out his arms to their full length he could touch the buildings on either side.

Peter immediately feels more comfortable when they enter the shop that Shuri has in mind. It smells like worn leather and faintly of sage incense and is decorated in dark, saturated colors that make if feel cocoon-like. There’s a record playing that’s upbeat and poppy, but underscored with a driving tribal drumbeat. It’s like what might happen if Miriam Makeba ever covered ABBA. Peter immediately loves it.

It turns out that Wakanda went through it’s own disco era in the 90s, and most of the clothes, and the music, date from that time – wide leg jump suits, furs in bright, unnatural colors, sparkle and shine everywhere. It makes Peter smile. 

The three of them dig through piles of clothing looking for something to stand out. When Peter tries on the burgundy velvet suit, he knows it’s the right choice. Wanda whistles at him when he comes out of the dressing room, and Shuri gives him a wide smile.

“Finally,” she says. “Looking good, Spider Boy.” 

“It’s not too much?” he asks.

“If you don’t buy that I’m going to beat you,” Wanda says.

Shuri helps him pair it with a dark shirt and a gold lamé bowtie. He feels confident in the outfit in a way that feels strangely similar to how he feels when he puts on his spidey suit.

He thanks Shuri profusely as they walk back. They’ve somehow managed to waste the entire day shopping. It’s going on six, the sun sinking down low in the sky and casting the perfect golden hour light that always makes Peter long for his camera.

When they get back Shuri excuses herself to go and get some work done, and Peter’s about to do the same when Wanda tugs on his arm.

“Oh no,” she says. “I told you we were going to talk, so let’s talk.”

Peter rolls his eyes at her.

“Fine,” he says. “Just let me put this stuff away.”

When he wanders back into the living room, Bucky is there as well, pouring some amber liquid from an elaborate silver flask into three glasses.

“What are we drinking?” Peter says, taking a seat between the two of them and nestling deep into the couch cushions. 

“The good stuff,” Bucky replies.

“I stole some of Thor’s Asgardian Mead,” Wanda says with a smirk. “Let’s get fucked up, boys.”

“Well, alright then.”

They clink their glasses together and drink deeply.

“So Bucky tells me you’re sleeping with Tony,” Wanda says offhandedly, as though she didn’t carefully plan that line of attack.

Peter chokes on his drink and nearly snorts mead out of his nose. He was expecting questions, but he thought she’d warm up to the subject.

“You don’t pull your fucking punches,” he wheezes, the burn of the alcohol sharp down his throat. 

“I never have,” she says.

“We’re not sleeping together,” Peter says. We’re just sleeping. Together. Like, in the same bed. That’s it. It helps with the nightmares, so he puts up with me.”

“He does more than put up with you,” Wanda says.

“Jeeze, Wands, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t understand why you won’t tell him how you feel!”

“You know exactly why!”

“Oh it would ruin everything. Oh, woe is me,” Wanda mocks. 

“It’s not a funny thing, ok? I don’t think it’s funny.”

“I don’t think it’s funny either,” she says. “I think it’s stupid.” 

“Hey,” Bucky says, raising his hands as thought to placate one or both of them. “Nobody thinks you’re stupid, Boss.”

“I do,” Wanda says. “I think he’s stupid. You are being stupid, Pietro.”

And at that very opportune time, Mr. Stark pokes his head into the room.

“Hey Pete,” he says, surveying the three of them suspiciously. “Everything alright in here. I heard yelling.” 

“Oh my fucking god,” Bucky mutters under his breath.

“Yeah, Mr. Stark, everything’s fine. Wanda just gets a little bit upset when we start debating the best Harry Potter characters. Nothing to see here.” 

“Obviously it’s Hermione, without whom everyone would be dead,” Wanda says, thankfully playing along. 

“Right,” Mr. Stark says, still eyeing them suspiciously. “Well, if you need anything I got this conference call with the World Council to work out final ceremony details, and then I’ll be in the lab. Just holler.”

“Sure thing, sir. I’ll see you later?”

“Absolutely, kid,” he says with a determined nod. “Barnes. Maximoff.”

And then he saunters out of the room. 

Wanda gives Peter a loaded look, and Bucky falls back onto the cushions laughing.

“What the hell was that?” he finally asks after catching his breath. “He’s gone all over-protective boyfriend.”

Bucky motions to both of them to finish their drinks and then refills all three glasses. Peter feels the warmth coat his throat as he swallows and feels a bit looser for it. He’s glad Thor keeps the strong stuff on hand. He knows Wanda and Bucky must be feeling it too, worse than Peter with his super metabolism.

“That is not what’s happening,” he says. “He kinda thought he saw me die. Maybe it makes sense if he’s a little protective.”

“And you love it,” Bucky says. “You love it so much.”

“He doesn’t feel that way about me, is what I’m saying,” Peter says. “And honestly, if both of you would accept that and stop harping it would make my life a lot easier.”

“You seriously don’t see it?” Bucky says. “The pining has just reached melodramatic levels.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk about pining,” Peter shoots back. “I don’t see you making any headway with the super solider.”  

“Well, Boss, that is because Stevie is a straight as they come and was uptight even for the 1940s. He’s got a stick so far up his ass …”

Wanda interrupts him by bursting out into a fit of giggles.

“Care to share with the class, Wands?” Bucky asks.

“You want it to be your stick up his ass,” she says, gasping for breath.

Peter tries to keep in his giggles, but can’t quite manage it, snorting, and Bucky is soon laughing too.

“Damn,” Bucky says, wiping his eyes. “Damn, but I really, really do.” 

"And you two never ..." Peter waves his hands around to indicate, well who knows what, really. "Not ever during the war, when you were all alone in camp tents and fearing for your lives?"

"That I would definitely remember," Bucky says.

"You have just disappointed so many historians. My civics teacher did this whole unit on the history of gender and sexuality. She was convinced you two were a thing. She wrote her entire thesis on it. We had to read so many of your letters home."

Bucky winces at that. 

"Those were definitely not for public consumption. So much repressed sexual tension - all on my part - and all coming to jack squat."

“So why don’t you make your play now, man?” Peter asks.

“C’mon, Pete,” Bucky says, more soberly. “You know I can’t do that. It’d traumatize the poor guy. We’d never be friends again.”

“Well,” Peter says with a shrug. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“It’s different,” Bucky insists. “You’re lucky, and it’s different for you.”

“It’s not,” Peter says. “I’ve never been lucky a day in my life.”

This time it’s Wanda who presses newly-refilled glasses into their hands.

“Ok, you sad sacks of shit. That’s enough. My turn for a tale of woe. I killed my boyfriend to try to prevent a genocide, and then it didn’t even work. You should feel terrible for me.”

She toasts them ironically, and downs her drink.

“Don’t give me those puppy dog eyes, Pietro.”

Peter feels his chin wobbling dangerously, and in lieu of giving into that urge, he buries his face in Wanda’s neck and hugs her. She lets out a soft “oof” as the breath leaves her body. Wanda’s body is surprisingly soft, and the skin of her neck smells like something flowery. Jasmine, like the really fancy loose-leaf tea they sell at the Chinatown tea shops. It’s nice.

“Are you sniffing me? You know that’s rude, right?" 

“Mmhmm. You smell nice.” 

“You’re a weirdo,” she says, but she pets his hair in a soothing way.

“Hey, how come he gets the sympathy?” Bucky says. “I got straight boy problems.”

He pulls at Peter’s arm until he falls back, and then he crawls across Peter and Wanda’s laps and collapses. Wanda transfers her hands to his hair and massages his scalp.

“Yes, straight boy problems,” she says. “Those are the worst.”

“You’re right, Wands. We are sad sacks of shit,” Peter says, wriggling down deeper into the couch cushions. He lays his head on Wanda’s shoulder and scratches at Bucky’s back with one hand.

“I do not tell lies,” Wanda says.

Peter chuckles and closes his eyes, drifting off to the sound of Wanda humming softly in a minor key and the feel of his two friends breathing gently against him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Chapter! With this one, I'm officially past the halfway mark on this fic, and that is really exciting for me. This was supposed to be a short interstitial chapter, but I have no self control. I spent too much time on imagining Wakandan street food and making Three Amigos jokes, so here we are. It was a blast for me to write, and I hope ya'll enjoy it half as much as I do. Once again, thank you all for following along with this story and for all the love you have given it. Next week, we jet off to Switzerland!


	6. Chapter 6

Peter’s mouth feels like it was scrubbed out with a steel wool pad and rubbing alcohol, and his pulse throbs in his temples as he boards the jet for Geneva the next morning. He’s pretty sure the last time he was this hung over, he had been 18, drinking multiple bottles from someone’s dad’s liquor cabinet at some house party out in the ‘burbs. And he had spent the entirety of the next day in bed wishing he was dead.

He can’t exactly compare it to anyone else’s experience, but his senses – already dialed up to 11 – do not take kindly to being treated in this manner. He’s wearing sunglasses and an old baseball cap, and still the sun glinting off the tarmac sends a sharp pain arcing through his thead. _Peter Parker, you are an idiot._

Inside, at least, the jet is air conditioned and stable for the moment. God, how is he gonna handle take off? He tosses his canvas carryall and garment bag into an overhead compartment and slumps down onto one of the bench seats that line both sides of the jet, facing inward. Then he closes his eyes and tries to willfully force his stomach to settle.

He’d awoken that morning with a crick in his neck and both legs asleep from the weight of Bucky, who was still fast asleep on his lap. Wanda was snoring quietly by his side. All three of them had passed out last night without even making the attempt to relocate.

Someone kicks at Peter’s foot, jostling him from his concentration.

“Scoot over,” Bucky grunts at him, and Peter complies. Very carefully.

Bucky looks about as good as Peter feels. His long hair is greasy, his skin has a faint yellow tinge, and his eyes are puffy and red-rimmed. They both settle back and close their eyes. 

“I am never drinking with you again,” Peter mutters. “Never. Again.”

“You are both pussies,” Wanda says, settling between them.

“How are you not hung over?” Peter asks. “I feel like my brain has been put through sieve.”

“Witch,” Bucky says. “She used her witchy witch powers to cure her headache, and now she’s trying to lord it over us.”

“Witchy witch powers?” Wanda says. “How about I just hold my liquor better than either of you lightweights.”

“Witchy witch powers,” Bucky insist, pointing at her and then crossing his arms and assuming nap position. 

“Greetings, compatriots!” Thor booms as he boards. “I look forward to our visit to the land of Swiss Cheese to celebrate our glorious victories.”

Peter’s head twinges. 

“Why are we yelling?” he whispers, massaging his temples.

“You look ill, young Parker! Is aught amiss?” 

“Nope,” Peter grunts. “Nope, Thor. Everything’s good.”

“I think what he’s trying to say is indoor voices, Thor.”

When Peter opens his eyes, Mr. Stark is there, leaning against the luggage rack above him and dangling a paper cup of coffee in front of Peter’s face. He makes grabby hands, and Mr. Stark relinquishes the cup to him.

“Bless you,” Peter sighs.

“Hey, how come he gets coffee?” Bucky asks. 

“Because, Barnes, I like him more than you,” Mr. Stark says.

Peter leans over and sticks his tongue out at Bucky, but immediately regrets the movement as his stomach does a decent imitation of riding a roller coaster. He feels all the blood drain from his face.  

“If you throw up on my jet, you are walking to Switzerland,” T’Challa says as he passes through the passenger area to get to the cockpit, General Okoye at his heels. 

Peter gives him a thumbs up, scrunching his face up to concentrate on settling his roiling gut.

“You are not looking so hot, kid,” Mr. Stark says, reaching down to run a hand through Peter’s hair, gripping gently and using that hold to angle Peter’s face up to meet his gaze. The touch sends an electric shock down Peter’s spine, and the hand in his hair is grounding, helping him to get a handle on his body. “Rough night?”

“You might say so, yes sir.”

“Hm,” the man hums in reply. “Well, there’s a little hair of the dog in that coffee, but let me know if you need Bruce to get you something stronger.”

“Thanks, sir,” Peter replies. “But I think I’ll muddle through.”

Mr. Stark gives him an absent but fond nod, and pulls his fingers from Peter’s hair. He represses the urge to whine at the loss. As the man walks away to settle at one of the little tables at the back of the plane, Bucky turns to Peter and waggles his eyebrows at him enthusiastically. 

“You … Shut up,” Peter says, his muddled brain unable, at the moment, to come up with a smart remark.

The coffee does have a decent helping of bourbon, and Peter sighs as he sips at it, feeling it ease the scratchiness of his throat.

Slowly, the rest of the team boards. Shuri flicks Peter on the head as she passes him to get to her seat accompanied by a cheery “Chin up, Spider Boy.”

Peter gives her the finger.

Captain Rogers is, oddly, the last one on board. When he ducks inside the jet he looks around as though he’s lost something.

“Oh, Buck, there you are,” he says, when his gaze lands on Bucky. “I was looking for you.”

“On time and everything,” Bucky says, giving the Captain an absent wave. “Been doing great without a babysitter for a fair few decades now.”

“Uh, right,” the Captain says. “Well, sorry I guess …”

And Peter is just over this awkwardness. He slips his oversized headphones onto his ears and drowns out the conversations around him with a driving bubblegum pop beat and wailing vocals.

_Oh, I can’t wait, I can’t wait, to lose all my friends in one night. I can’t wait, I can’t wait to ruin the rest of my life …_

He concentrates on that beat while the jet taxis and takes off. His stomach flips and flops, but he manages to keep everything down, and by the time they reach altitude he is dozing in his seat.

*

Tony shakes his hand like it’s been burned as he walks away from Peter to settle at a table and get back to work. He’s got to get himself under control. The touching is … Not good. He’s hoping that Peter puts it down to Tony’s general touchy-feely nature.

The kid has experience with that, after all. He used to move Peter around like he was a piece on chess board back in the Avengers compound lab. He was usually off in his own world, running calculations in his head, or finding a fix to a wiring issue, and he’d take Peter by the hips and move him aside without a word to get to whatever it was he needed. And Peter would take a beat to collect himself and move on as though nothing had happened.

Those touches hadn’t meant anything, though. They hadn’t felt the same. They had been absentmindedly familiar. Friendly. It was all before some perverse switch in Tony’s mind had been flicked on. But he’s hoping the kid doesn’t notice the difference. He thinks back to his thumb on Peter’s chin, the hand buried in his hair, all the little intimacies he’s been using to bring Peter closer, to force him to look Tony in the face. It’s not the type of thing a good mentor should be doing, a side-effect maybe of the closeness that’s formed between them sharing a bed.

He can only imagine the betrayal Peter would feel if he knew the general direction of Tony’s thoughts at the moment, much less some of the specifics he’s conjured up in moments of weakness.

Whenever he needs to remind himself of why this is all such a bad idea, he imagines the look on Peter’s face if he were to find out – crumpled dejection and his own helping of guilt, because Peter always thinks things are his fault, somehow. Tears in his big brown eyes, probably. Nope. That is the path to self-destruction, and Tony has mostly given that up. 

Except, has he, really? It certainly doesn’t feel like it. He had waited in vain for Peter to come to bed last night, tossing and turning, and finally giving up on sleep in favor of fiddling with the newest iteration of the Iron Man suit and coming up for ideas of what else he might add. Then he’d gotten up early this morning and found Peter curled up with Wanda and Bucky on the couch, sleeping on top of each other like a pile of wolf pups who had exhausted themselves snapping and tussling which each other, each of them just a little bit feral. It had made his heart twinge.

Tony blocks out the sounds of Clint and Nat bickering over a game of cards and Steve and Bucky arguing about God knows what. A hundred years of history together has got to leave a lot of baggage. Pepper’s going to meet them in Geneva for the ceremony, and he’s got a pile of paperwork she’s sent him that needs to be done by the time they get there. It’s boring as fuck, but the pain Pepper will inflict on him if he doesn’t get this done is enough to motivate him.

He’s halfway through the pile when someone slips into the seat across from him. He flicks his eyes up from a dry legal contract to see Peter grinning at him, headphones slung around his neck, hair sticking up in a hundred different directions from his nap.

“Hey Mr. Stark,” he says, giving Tony a little wave. 

“What’s up, Pete? You feeling any better?” 

“Yeah,” Peter says, blushing a little. “Sorry about earlier. I, uh, guess I don’t know my limit when it comes to Asgardian Mead?”

“Oh, believe me, we have all made that mistake,” Tony says with a grin.

“So, um, I wanted to talk to you about something,” Peter says. “Am I interrupting?” 

“Never, kid. What’s up?”

“So you know I’ve been working on updating the Jarvis code, trying to get a close approximation of Vision before … Well, before Thanos. I think even when I find a way to bring him back, there’s gonna be things he can’t remember, like amnesia, sort of? I know it’s not ideal, but I can’t find a way around it. Or at least I haven’t yet.”

“I mean, you’re trying to recreate a mind, Pete,” Tony tries to reassure him. “That’s a little more challenging than just creating an AI.” 

“Right,” Peter says. “Right. It’s been a challenge. I’ve actually, I’ve been mining the security footage from the Avengers facility, everything FRIDAY’s been recording, for those involving Vision. Then translating them into code to include in his memories.”

“But how do you deal with the hierarchy of memories?” Tony asks. The idea is exciting. “Humans don’t remember things perfectly, and a lot of things not at all. Like, you don’t want him stuck with memories of every single time he took a leak, right?”

Peter laughs at that.

“Well, yeah,” he says. “So I sort of wrote a program to simulate memory deterioration?”

“Like the acid wash jeans of memory?”

They smile at each other at that.

“Not a bad analogy,” Peter says. “And I instituted a ranking system to give everything proper precedence.”

“Smart,” Tony beams at him. The kid is just so smart. “I’d love to take a look at your code. See what makes it tick. 

“I’d like you to do more than that,” Peter says. If Tony imagines a tantalizing breathiness to his voice, that’s even more proof that he’s got to lock this shit down. 

“What do you mean?” he asks, leaning forward over the table. 

“I’m stuck,” Peter admits. “I’ve had the idea to use some of Wanda’s memories of the two of them to supplement what I already have. There will always be gaps, but I don’t want to risk him not remembering everything … Everything they were to each other.”

Tony nods.

“Translating memories into code,” he says. “That would be quite a trick.” 

“Well, that’s what I’m hoping you can help me with, sir. Any ideas you can come up with. I feel like I’m beating my head against a wall.” 

And, in truth, Tony’s mind is flying with ideas. 

“Hm …” he says. “Well, there are certainly … Possibilities.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

When Tony zones back in, Peter is giving him a soft smile.

“Let me think on it, yeah, kid?”

“Sure thing, sir,” Peter says. “I’ll let you get back to it, shall I?”

“Oh please,” Tony says. “Don’t leave me alone with the black hole of paperwork. Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of hero?”

“So they say, but I wouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

“You know, when Pepper took over the company, I thought that would mean she took care of all the paperwork.”

“I think you’ve been bamboozled, Mr. Stark.”

“I think you might be right,” he says. “So what do you say, kid? Wanna forge my signature on some paperwork? I know you know how.”

“Now, how do you know about that?” Peter asks, grinning widely.

“You forged an entire letter from me to get yourself excused from senior physics,” Tony says, waving his hands around. “Not exactly subtle, Pete.”

“Well, to be fair, I could have taught that class.”

“I … Actually do not doubt that,” Tony admits.

“How’d you find out, though? I thought I covered all my bases.” 

“You know if you’re doing an independent study, you still have to get graded by your advisor? I only know that because I got a call from your school.”

“Well, shit,” Peter says with a laugh. “And I thought I was being real smooth. Why didn’t you say anything? Or tell Aunt May?”

Tony shrugs.

“Well, I considered the source, and I figured that chances are you were using the free time for a good cause, so I didn’t see the point. You got an A, by the way. Would have been and A+, but you didn’t let me in on the grift.”

At that, Peter’s eyes shift away from Tony’s, and then he’s burying his face in his hands and peeking out at him through his fingers.

“You always give me way too much credit,” he says, voice muffled in his palms.

“Wait,” Tony says, reaching out to pull Peter’s hands away from his face. “Kid, what were you doing with your free period?” 

“So, ok …” Peter bites his bottom lip and looks at Tony up through his long, long lashes. He’s trying his damnedest to look innocent.

“Peter?”

“I was kinda seeing this guy at NYU? He got out of his last class at 2, so I would go hang out in his dorm room for a couple of hours before May would expect me home.”

Tony feels the shock wash over his face, eyes going wide. Whatever he thought the kid was going to say, it was not that.

“Wait,” Tony chokes out at last. “Wait. Am I getting the Peter Parker gets deflowered story right now?” 

“I mean, there’s not really enough to it to make a whole story.”

Tony leans forward onto his elbows and propping up his chin with one hand to blink rapidly at Peter, who is now a deep tomato red. Who would have guessed that Peter has a wild streak. He certainly hadn’t.

“Oh, he was that good, was he?”

“Oh my God, Mr. Stark …” 

“Skipping class to get laid,” Tony tsks at him.

“Can we maybe never talk about this again?” Peter asks, weakly.

“Peter Parker, you little minx.”

* 

The Rhone is shimmering blue ribbon feeding into Lake Geneva, framed by the the craggy, snow-capped peaks of the Alps. Peter presses his face close to the plane window and watches the city resolve itself from a misty, impressionist swirl into oil-painting photorealism.

Before he’d become an intergalactic hitchhiker, and everything had gone to shit, Peter, Ned and MJ had made plans to backpack across Europe the summer after graduation. They were going to start in Italy. Hit Venice, Florence and Rome, then go wherever the mood took them. Sometimes Peter wishes he really could have made that trip. There’s something in that jolt of adrenaline that comes with touching down in a new city. Wakanda is a fascinating place, but his time there has been with work, and struggle, and not a little bit of trauma. A holiday it was not. Maybe now, he thinks, now that there isn’t a cloud of doom over their heads, they could really go.

There’s a small fleet of sedate, black cars there to meet them at the airstrip when they land. They drive through a series of twisting old town streets to the Four Season’s Hotel on the banks of Lake Geneva. Peter’s eyes go wide at the white stone edifice glinting in the sun. Sure, it’s not like he hasn’t lived in fancy places before. But the Wakandan capital complex and the Avengers compound are both ultimately functional spaces. This is just … Not. 

Beside him, Mr. Stark pats him on the shoulder and calls out to the group.

“All right now, children. We’re leaving for the ceremony in exactly three hours. Bright smiles and best behavior, yeah?”

Peter spends exactly five minutes in his assigned room, hanging up his suit to make sure it doesn’t wrinkle, and taking a quick peak put his window. He’s got a lakeside view, and the sun glints off the waves and dapples the sails of tiny sailboats bobbing on the water.

But he has other plans beyond taking in the scenery. Putting on a hoodie and shoving his ski mask and goggles into his pockets, he quietly slips out of the door, turning to walk away and coming face to face with Mr. Stark, who raises a questioning eyebrow at him. _Well, shit._  

“Going somewhere in a hurry, there, Pete?”

“Ummm...”

“Not going AWOL on me, are you?”

“No, sir,” Peter says. “So, Bruce kind of put me in touch with a couple guys at CERN, and they promised me a tour?”

“Really,” Mr. Stark says, looking at him over the rim of his smart glasses. “You’re cutting out right now to go sightseeing?”

“Mr. Stark, it’s CERN. Like, they’re literally creating new elements and unlocking the building blocks to the universe. I think that’s a little bit beyond sightseeing.”

“Oh, like creating a new element is hard,” Mr. Stark scoffs. “I did that in my garage once.”

Peter tries schooling the smile off his face at that. He loves the man, but his ego really is big enough to be getting on with. May as well not seem too impressed. 

“Not everyone has the foresight to keep a particle accelerator in their garage like you,” Peter says. “I’ll see you around.”

He starts to walk down the royal blue-carpeted hallway, but Mr. Stark calls after him.

“Pete!”

Peter turns.

“Kid, you really can’t be late to this shindig, alright? It would be very, very bad optics.”

“Ok, well, let’s take the dad voice down several notches,” Peter says, feeling the tension rise in his body. He’s on edge as it is with the upcoming publicity, necessary as it may be. He doesn’t need Mr. Stark treating him like he’s 15 again right now. It feels like every time they move past this, they circle right back to it again. 

“Dad voice?” Tony screeches.

“Believe me,” Peter says. “It’s not fun for me either.”

Having seemingly silenced Mr. Stark for an unusually long beat, Peter takes that as his opportunity to leave.

“I’ll see you later, sir,” he says, waving at him as he scurries down the hallway. “I won’t be late.”

He reaches the end of the hall and takes stairs up to the roof. There, he slips his ski mask and goggles on, and checks that his ever-present web slingers are secure on his wrists. Then he flings himself backward off the top of the hotel, at the last possible moment sending a web out to cling to some guttering and giving him leverage to swing forward. 

He thwips forward, passing fountains and gardens and monuments, breathing in the fresh mountain air and exulting in the rush he feels in flying through the city once.

*

Peter flings his door open less than 20 minutes before they have to be in the fucking motorcade. Tony’s been in the room waiting for him for the past 30. He’d wanted to bring the suit he’d bought for Peter by personally.  A three-piece, silver, slim-lined wool check Tom Ford that will look stunning on him. Now that he’s finally shown up to put it on. 

Peter’s hair is windswept, his cheeks chapped and ruddy, and he’s got an enormous smile on his face. He blinks in confusion to see Tony stretched out in a chair by the window. His presence doesn’t seem to faze the kid at all, though.

“Mr. Stark, it was so cool. I got to see the actual Large Hadron Collider. I touched it. I’ve still got the goose bumps from it,” he says, holding out one arm with hairs standing on end. “I mean, I know, I know. We do really cool science. But this is just, it’s something else. I mean …”

“If you’re gonna fanboy, fanboy while you change,” Tony interrupts him. “Suit’s on the bed. Shoes.”

He tosses the shiny black brogues one by one at Peter who catches them and then looks at the bed. 

“This isn’t my suit,” he says.

“Yeah, Shuri told me about your little charity shop adventure,” Tony says. “I think you’re gonna want to go with something a little classier.”

For a second, Tony thinks the kid I gonna argue with him. He’s got that obstinate look on his face that means trouble. But after a tense, silent stare down, he just shrugs and shakes his head.

“You’re such a snob sometimes,” he mutters as he strips off his hoodie and flicks the button on his jeans. “I had kinda forgotten about that bit.”

“I’m not a snob, I’m a connoisseur,” Tony says. “Kid, it’s a Tom Ford made to your measurements. Just put it on.”

“Alright, alright,” Peter says, the last word muffled as he pulls off his t-shirt.

Tony sits up in his chair abruptly, eyes flicking to all the doors of the room, knowing he should remove himself from the situation now that Peter is on his way to getting dressed. But the kid seems supremely unbothered by stripping in front of him. He’s wiggling out of skinny jeans and continuing their conversation. 

“How d’you know this thing is gonna fit anyway?” he asks, approaching the bed where the suit is laid out with trepidation.

“I have your measurements on file.”

Peter turns to look at him questioningly. He’s standing in a beam of golden sunlight in nothing but his boxers and his web shooters with the lack of self-consciousness that comes only to the very young and very beautiful. Tony tries swallow, but finds his throat unbearably dry.

“Why?” Peter asks cautiously.

“I, um, I might be making you a new Spidey suit. Figured it was well past time for an upgrade.”

“Really?” Peter says, smile breaking over his face transformatively.

“Yeah, kid. It’s mostly just fabrication and testing at this point. Now hurry up. Chop. Chop.”

Peter dresses quickly, like someone who is used to changing in New York Alleys before heading out to battle. Soon he’s buttoning up the suit vest, pale blue tie slung around his neck. He bends over to tie his shoes, and Tony averts his eyes. _Don’t be creepy …_ His inner voice intones.  But when the kid stands up Tony does admire how Peter looks in the suit. It’s slim cut enough to accentuate his lean muscles, and the steely color makes him somehow older, contrasting with his eyes and hair in a way that makes them pop.

“Well?” Peter says, doing a quick spin. “Am I acceptable?”

“Yeah, you’ll pass,” Tony says, drily. A notification comes across the screen on his smart glasses, and he stands, buttoning his own double-breasted blue pinstripe. “Cars are here, kid, let’s go.” 

He hustles Peter out of the room and into the elevator, and presses the button for the lobby. The kid is struggling with the tie, crossing and uncrossing the two ends as through he can’t quite remember how this is done. 

“Seriously?” Tony finally huffs. “Stop torturing the silk. Come here.”

“What?” Peter complains. “It’s not like I’ve had a lot of occasions to wear a tie.”

“It’s a basic life skill, Pete,” Tony insists. He grabs Peter’s hips and positions the kid in front of him, reaching his arms around him to knot the tie in the reflection bouncing off the gold-plated elevator walls. He smells just a little bit like sweat, but mostly like fresh air from his swing around the city. Tony makes sure not to press his body in too close, but the warmth radiating off Peter’s body is simultaneously intoxicating and comforting. He almost swears he hears the kid’s breath hitch, but that’s just his imagination making him hear what he wants to.

“There you go,” he says, tightening the tie and running a careless finger along the line of Peter’s collar. “Perfect.”

“Th-Thank you, sir,” Peter stutters, and Tony can’t help but stare curiously at the reflection of his face. Maybe he’s still feeling the vestiges of his hangover from this morning.

Then the elevator dings, and the two of them break apart and move into the gaggle of their team members who are filing again into black cars that will shuttle them off to the World Council Headquarters.

“Bozhe Moi, Spiderling, your hair,” Natasha exclaims, pulling Peter away from Tony and tsking disapprovingly at the disarray. “Are you trying to make a nest for the birds?” 

“That’s just what it does,” Peter insists.

She pulls a little bottle of something out of some hidden pocket in her skin-tight dress, and runs it through Peter’s hair, slicking it down. It probably is more acceptable, but Tony can’t help it if he prefers the wild look. 

The World Council Headquarters is mostly glass and steel, a sprawling edifice with an atrium that looks out over the lake and an array of flags from across the world. Tony sends Peter a reassuring glance as they’re hustled out of the cars and into the building. He knows the kid isn’t used to the publicity. From what Tony has cobbled together, he’d been outed when Quill’s piece of junk ship had crash-landed back on Earth, and Peter had emerged in his suit, but with his mask shredded.

A part of him wants to spare Peter this, but there isn’t exactly any going back now. No wrapping the kid in cotton wool, as much as he would like. 

Tony is immediately pulled out of the protective formation of the Avengers when they arrive, and on to glad-hand with council members and presidents and prime ministers. He puts on his best fake smile telling the British PM that unfortunately, no, he can’t work with them on an AI defense system and reminding a US general that he is definitely, definitely, out of the weapons game. Really, you’d think people would stop asking by this point. 

He feels a twinge of relief as the ceremony actually begins, and he has to excuse himself to sit on the big dais that has been erected for this purpose. The relief doesn’t last long. The ceremony itself is long and pretentious, with lots of breaks for cultural displays, which mostly translate into long breaks for overly-sincere songs and modern dances. Maybe if Tony were less of a cynical bastard it all might mean more to him. But he’s not, and he’s sees it for what it is – an opportunity for world leaders to congratulate themselves for their own perseverance in the face of alien terrors.

It’s been decided that Steve will speak for the group. His image has been completely rehabilitated since Thanos came to Earth, and Tony’s not stupid enough to think that anyone wants to hear from him. No, they all want Captain America to honor the dead and assure them that everything will be ok.

The speech itself is a little pat for Tony’s taste, but it seems to hit all the right notes for those in the crowd, and he knows Steve is sincere in everything he says.  There’s hardly a dry eye in the house when he’s done.

The rest of the team is called up to the podium and awarded with a special medal for extraordinary service. Then they take a few questions from the press corps. Coulson talks a little about their alliances with the Guardians and the Nova Corps to try and stay in front of any alien threats, and Rhodey answers questions about expanding the War Machine initiative. Tony’s agreed to provide the military and World Council with a new line of defensive tools and monitoring systems.

They’re about to wrap things up when someone shouts “Spider-Man!” from the back of the room.

Peter blinks up at the little gaggle of press and walks slowly to the podium, hands buried in his pockets. He adjusts the microphone and nods to the reporter that called for him.

“What do you say to the people who claim you and your fellow Avengers abandoned them during the years after the Snap? That your determination to bring your teammates back contributed to global chaos? Do you think that argument has merit?”

Peter clears his throat and then removes his hands from his pockets and grips the podium. Before he can speak, Bucky, Wanda, Sam and T’Challa move wordlessly and in tandem to form a phalanx behind him.

“Well,” Peter says, voice steady and projected so the whole room can hear him. “I think I would ask those people to examine the results. I’m aware that most people thought we were crazy to work so long to reverse the Snap. Maybe even traitors. SHIELD included.”

He casts a sideways glance at Coulson, who tips his head in wry acknowledgement.

“Yes, we were determined to reunite the Avengers. But I would say that that kind of loyalty is a good thing. The members of our team will always fight for one another. We will always be there, standing together, shoulder to shoulder and back to back. And when we do that, that means we stand for you too. We fight for you. It’s what we have always done. What we always will do.”  

Peter squares his jaw and looks out to the crowd with determination writ over his face, and the reporters murmur and the cameras flash, and Tony knows, without any doubt, that what Steve, or Rhodey, or Coulson said won’t matter tomorrow. The heartfelt memorials and plans for safety won’t matter. The front page of every newspaper in the world tomorrow morning will have Peter Parker standing on the world stage and leading the Avengers on to a bright and shining future.

*

Peter’s hands are shaking when he steps off the dais, but Bucky and Wanda are there by his side, and it helps him to keep his spine straight and his face neutral. The cameras are still snapping and flashing in their direction. It makes his skin crawl. He’d much rather be on the other side of that sound.

It’s with a sense of relief that he dips his head to climb into the back seat of the car. He’s joined by Wanda, Bucky and Sam, all squeezed in together tight with their shoulders and legs pressed together. Sam reaches over to squeeze his knee.

“That was good speech you gave there, Pete.”

Peter lets out a shaky breath.

“Shit, I never wanna do that without a mask ever again,” Peter says. Then he leans his head onto Wanda’s shoulder and giggles.

“I wasn’t going to say anything, but you really shouldn’t be in charge of public relations anymore,” Wanda tells him, patting his head and stifling her own laughter.

When they get back to the hotel, all Peter wants to do is collapse onto his bed and sleep, but then there’s a knock on his door and Wanda and Shuri are there, forcing their way into his room with dressed draped over their their arms and bag filled with mysterious gadgets and bottles. 

“What’s going on?” Peter asks.

“We didn’t trust you to get ready on your own, Spider Boy,” Shuri says.

“Go take a shower,” Wanda says. “Your hair is already a mess, again.”

She physically pushes Peter into the bathroom while Shuri pulls out her phone and a tiny speaker and puts on some music.

Peter takes a quick shower and comes out to find Shuri playing with Wanda’s hair while Janelle Monae sings all about the way she feels. 

“I could do some braids,” Shuri offers. “Maybe an updo?”

“I just never know what to do with it, but I trust you,” Wanda concedes.

There’s a quiet knock on the door, and Peter goes to answer it while they consult. Outside, one of the hotel porters is holding a garment bag in one hand. When Peter flings open the door, he offers it up. 

“A delivery from Mr. Stark, sir,” the man says. 

“Um … Thank you?” Peter says, confused. He takes the bag from the man and wanders back into the room.

“What is it, Pietro?” Wanda asks.

“Something else from Mr. Stark,” he says, unzipping the bag.

It’s a tuxedo, because of course it is. Because Mr. Stark doesn’t trust him to dress himself. He knows, he knows it’s meant kindly. Another act of a mentor who wants to help his protégé fit in where he obviously doesn’t. But it’s somehow demeaning that he doesn’t think Peter can handle something so simple.

He tosses it on the bed with an exasperated sigh. 

“I’m so over this,” he says. 

“I like the one you chose better anyway,” Shuri says, coming up behind him to take a look. “This is boring.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Peter says.

“Now, we really do have to do something about your hair, Pietro,” Wanda says. Shuri’s done her’s up in a twisty mass that reminds Peter of snakes, but in a good way. She looks like a very chic Medusa.

They’re late for the ball, because apparently Peter needs more work than even Shuri and Wanda anticipated. They miss their ride, and have to take an Uber. Showing up at a stately home with marble columns and gargoyles hanging from the gutters in a neon green, 20-year-old Fiat doesn’t’ exactly make Peter feel like Cinderella. And they are more than an hour late because of traffic.

The three of them pile out of the back seat of their ride like it’s a clown car.

“Oh my God, Spider Boy,” Shuri says. She’s dressed in a long white shift dress that flows down to the ground. “If I missed the good hor d’oerves, I will not be pleased.” 

She hurries up the front stairs to the door. 

Peter waits to help Wanda crawl out of back seat in her wine red mermaid-style dress.

“You ready for this, Pietro?” she asks.

“Whenever you are,” he says, taking her arm to escort her up the stairs.

There is a literal ballroom filled with people who are actually dancing to a live big band. And suddenly Peter remembers that the last dance he went to was Homecoming, which had a 19-year-old DJ, and punch with a big ball of raspberry sherbet floating in the middle, and decorations made of cardboard and excessive amounts of glitter. Also, he skipped out after about five minutes to go and track down the Vulture. The whole experience had given him a bit of an aversion to dances.

He grips Wanda’s hand just a little too hard and she slaps his arm.

“Ouch,” Wanda whines.

“Sorry.” 

Peter grabs a glass of champagne off the tray of a passing waiter, and slinks over toward a corner where he hopes he can blend in, with Wanda on his heels.

“Slow down,” she hisses at him. “I’m wearing these ridiculous heels.”

But then he’s accosted by a man in a very large mustache and a sash that Peter thinks marks him as a diplomat of some kind, so he should probably know who he is. He doesn’t, but smiles politely while the man talks to him in French-accented English about some sort of Nuclear de-escalation initiative, which would be interesting maybe if he didn’t assume Peter already knows all the details.

When he manages to politely extract himself from that man, he’s approached next by a small Chinese woman in silver qipao and a shark-like grin who drops hints about Avenger outreach to other countries. China is naturally heavily implied as a starting point. And, ok, yes, Peter would love to visit and maybe meet some of the Beijing-based heroes, but this may not be the best time to hash it out …

And then there’s just a long line of diplomats and whoa, is that the president of Germany? And Peter has no idea what any of them are talking about or why they want to talk to him at all. It’s times like these that he really misses his anonymity, before the Benatar crash landed and a photographer had snapped a picture of him in the rubble with his mask off, trying to drag Groot away from the – bad, bad, very bad for trees – flames.

Finally, he manages to extract himself, grab a fresh glass of champagne, and find Wanda leaning against a wall and just observing in that slightly disturbing way she has. He maneuvers over to her and slumps down beside her.

“Holy Shit.”

She smiles lazily at him.

“How does it feel to be famous Pietro?”

“It’s terrible,” he says. “And after this afternoon, I thought they all hated me anyway. It’s very confusing.” 

“Not so confusing,” she says. “You gave a very heroic speech ‘When we fight for each other, we fight for you.’ It’s good. Cheesy as fuck, but good.”

“Ugh,” Peter groans, rubbing at his face and barely resisting the urge to run his fingers through his hair, because he thinks Wanda and Shuri both might kill him if he messes it up again. “I sounded just like the Captain. I hate that. I was nervous.”

“Well, whatever it was, all the people in this room ate it up with a spoon. And now you have to pay the consequences.”

“I don’t know if I can afford the bill,” Peter says.

Both of them are quiet for a while, watching the shifting crowd as they dance and twirl. Peter sees Bucky leading a tall blonde woman he’s never seen before off the dance floor and Natasha dancing with Captain Rogers, his back impeccably straight.

Then the crowds part, it seems, and he catches sight of Mr. Stark on the far side of the ballroom. He’s dressed in unmitigated black and twirling Miss Potts across the dance floor and oh, oh Peter wasn’t actually prepared for that.

They’re really close, Mr. Stark smiling widely at her and Miss Potts throwing her head back to laugh. They look good together, like they fit. Miss Potts is in a long blue sheath, her strawberry blonde hair pulled up off her shoulders. She doesn’t look like the kind of person that needs any assistance in dressing for a fancy event. She looks like she could handle that in her sleep, and then spend the entire evening dancing beautifully and making meaningful but noncommittal small talk with world leaders. Nothing at all like actual walking disaster Peter Parker.

Peter knocks back his glass of champagne.

“It’s hot in here,” he tells Wanda. “I think I need some fresh air.”

“Alright,” Wanda says. “I’m going to go bully T’Challa into dancing with me.”

Peter gives her a little wave and makes his way out of the ballroom, snagging another glass of champagne before he does, and wanders and into a dark hallway. He swears he saw a balcony around here somewhere. But before he can find it, he hears the sounds of raised voices and steps back into an alcove to avoid a confrontation. 

It takes a second for him to recognize Bucky’s voice, pitched low and harsh.

“I don’t know why you’re so upset about me making time with some broad, Stevie,” he says. The 1940s always comes out in his language when he gets angry. And Peter can tell he’s livid now.

“It’s … It’s indecorous,” Captain Rogers shouts back. He’s having a much harder time keeping his volume in check. 

“Indecorous,” Bucky spits. “Well, that is a mighty big word. You sure that’s what you’re upset about, though?”

“And what else would I be upset about?”

“Gee, I don’t know, Stevie. You think you might just be jealous?”

“Jealous?” his voice breaks a little on that word.

“Aw, don’t worry,” Bucky says. “You want me to set you up with a broad, all you gotta do is say so. It’ll be just like the old days, huh? Me with a dame on my arm, you … Running away from yours.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Buck,” 

“Of course you don’t,” Bucky scoffs. “You never do. Ignorance is bliss, yeah, Stevie? ‘Cause we can’t ever acknowledge what we really mean.” 

“You calling me a liar, now, hotshot?”

“Oh, you wanna go? ‘Cause you’re a big man, now, Stevie. I ain’t gotta defend you no more. You wanna go, we can take this outside right now. Be real indecorous.”

Peter hears one of them shove the other and decides that enough is enough. He steps out of the alcove and coughs. Two sets of angry blue eyes turn to him. 

“Everything ok here, boys?” he asks, as he and Bucky exchange looks.

“Yeah, Boss,” Bucky says, his mouth settling into a tight, serious line. “Everything’s fine.”

He glances back at the Captain, then pushes past Peter muttering “I’m so done with this.”

Peter and the Captain exchange a long, awkward look before he stomps off in the same direction after Bucky.

Well, that sounded … Exhausting.

Peter finally finds the balcony he was seeking out in the first place and pulls the fresh night air deep into his lungs. Here it really feels like fall. He swears he can smell a campfire somewhere in the distance. He sips his champagne, closes his eyes, and just breathes.

And that, of course, is when Tony Stark shows up.

*

The kid is late, and it’s putting Tony inordinately on edge. He wonders if Pete’s mad at him, and he can’t quite blame him if he is. You’d think by now he’d learn to think before doing things like completely railroading him this afternoon. You’d be wrong, but it would be a reasonable assumption.

He tries to put it all out of his mind. No sense dwelling. He has maybe a few too many whisky’s and dances with Natasha and then Nakia. He’s at the bar getting a refill when Pepper sidles up to him and catches him with that smile of hers. Yep, still makes his heart leap. He’d gotten so little of it in those final days of their relationship that he never really got desensitized to it.

“You did good today,” she tells him. 

“I said nothing today,” he reminds her with a tilt of his glass. “I shut my big fat mouth.”

“And don’t think I don’t know how hard that was for you.”

He smiles back at her.

“It was so hard, Pep.”

“I was impressed,” she nods at him. “Put that down and come dance with me.”

They chat mostly about business while he leads her in a sedate waltz around the room. And it’s weird to think this is all they are now. Associates. Friends. but it’s not really an unpleasant thought. All he did when they were together was hurt her, and it’s a relief, if he’s honest, not to have that burden hanging around his neck. They’re better with a little distance.

But all those little reminiscences fade away when he sees Peter enter the room. He is most definitely not wearing the tux Tony sent over. Instead he’s dressed in burgundy velvet with a gold bowtie, his hair slicked back in an artful wave. Tony feels all of the breath leave his body, and senses Pepper giving him a strange look.

“Tony?” she asks.

“Sorry, what?”

He tries to concentrate on the steps and the conversation, but he clocks Peter’s location out of the corner of his eye, and he notices when the kid sneaks out a side door just as Pepper is asking him if he wants to grab a drink.

“Um, Pep, I think I actually just saw someone. I gotta … I’ll see you later?”

“Uh, sure,” she says, perplexed as he weaves his way through the crowd, passing Steve looking like he’s on the war path. He considers, briefly, going after him, but figures he’s probably the last one to soothe a savage Steve. 

Down the hallway, he sees the door open to the balcony. _Gotcha kid,_ he thinks. 

He slips out into the cool air to find Peter leaning against the railing, lit only by the moon. He’s a vision in red and gold, and it makes Tony feel darkly territorial. He takes in the long, solid line of his back and down …

“That is quite a look, kid.”

Peter turns to him, and Tony feels himself pulled closer like there’s a string attached to his gut and the kid is holding the other end, reeling him in.

“You’re not disappointed?” Peter asks. “I didn’t wear the one you sent.”

“You’re wearing my colors kid,” Tony feels the words rumbling low in his chest. “You look gorgeous.” 

Peter’s jaw falls open as he stares up at Tony. Probably he shouldn’t have had that last drink. He’s not drunk, not really, but he’s in that liminal, tipsy space where his impulse control isn’t what it should be. He reaches out with one finger and pushes Peter’s lower jaw up to close his mouth, giving the kid a smirk. 

Then he wanders over to the railing, Peter trailing behind him. It’s a nice night. Cool, but not unpleasant. Out in front of them is an intricately arranged garden. Above, Tony can just barely see the pinpricks of stars through the filter of the city lights. The soft strings from the band can even be heard floating on the air.

“I’m sorry about this afternoon,” he says quietly, once they are settled side by side, Peter’s arm pressed against his own in a warm line. “I didn’t mean to give you, um, dad voice. I know you can take care of yourself, Pete. Doesn’t mean I don’t like to do the job sometimes. But I’m sorry if I went too far. Sometimes I don’t do so well with personal limits.” 

“It’s ok, Mr. Stark,” he replies. “I get it. I’m not really mad. Well, I was mad, but I’m not anymore. For some reason I have a hard time staying angry at you.”

Tony laughs at that.

“That is not a problem that many other people struggle with, let me tell you.” 

“Guess I must be special then,” Peter says.

“Of that, kid, there is no doubt.”

Peter just hums and nudges Tony’s shoulder with his own companionably. 

“You wanna dance?” Tony hears himself ask, the words falling from his lips almost unbidden. Part of him wants to pull them back in and lock them up tight. His heart gives a little stutter.

Peter looks over at him with wide eyes.

“If you don’t want to, it’s fine,” Tony says, quickly. “I mean, I understand if you don’t wanna make a big statement or anything. We don’t have to …”

“It’s not that,” Peter says, cutting him off. “I’m not embarrassed or anything. I just … I don’t actually know how to dance like those people in there were dancing. I haven’t actually been to a dance since high school. Homecoming? And that was mostly just rhythmic flailing.” 

“Well, say no more,” Tony says. “I kinda had to learn. Important part of being Howard Stark’s son was being able to impress the company.”

He moves away from the rail to the middle of the balcony, pushing through the instinct to examine this. Just showing the kid a few moves. It’s fine. A new song is starting.

 _Our romance won’t end on a sorrowful note, though by tomorrow you’re gone._  

“C’mon,” he says, motioning to Peter to get a move on. “You got those super-powered reflexes. This’ll be nothing.” 

Peter looks at him dubiously, but steps toward him.

“Now, back straight. Right hand at the waist, left hand in my right.”

He positions Peter as he speaks, can feel the kid softly kneading his hip and the firm clasp of his hand in his own. Then Tony mirrors his movements and pulls him in close so that their noses almost touch, their bodies a bare few inches apart. He feels Peter let out a harsh breath. Nervous?

_But though they take you from me, I’ll still possess: The way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea. …_

“From here it’s simple,” Tony says, pitching his voice low, afraid of somehow fracturing the moment. The air around them feels heavy with something he can’t quite place. “You just gotta follow where I lead you.”

“Think I can manage that,” Peter nods.

He leads Peter in a simple box step. The kid trips over his own feet at first and steps on Tony’s a couple times.

“Motherfucker,” Tony hisses when he does it the first time.

“Sorry, sorry,” Peter says laughing. “Sorry, sir. I’ll, um, I’ll be gentle.”

And Tony can’t help but laugh too.

“See that you do,” he says, pulling Peter in just a centimeter closer. 

He’s never been one for the standards – too slow and soothing where Tony feels music should vibrate your bones – but he’s always had a fondness for this song. They played it at some of the parties his parents used to have. The lyrics are good. They remind you that love doesn’t come like a lightening bolt, but is instead a thing that grows. Made up of all the minutiae of a person, of the life you build together. Or, anyway, he’s always found that to be true.

_The way your smile just beams, the way you sing off key, the way you haunt my dreams …_

Peter is flicking his eyes between his feet and Tony’s face, his steps still stuttering, but true and _Oh. Oh fuck._ The pieces all slowly click into place like the tumblers in a lock. It’s strange that he’s just now realizing he’s in love with the kid when he’s been in the middle of falling for so long. It’s not an infatuation. It’s not warm paternal feelings. This is a disaster.

“You ready for a spin, kid?” he asks, voice husky with emotion that he hopes to God Peter can’t hear.

“Why not?” Peter says with a smile.

So he spins Peter out while the kid laughs, twirls him around with one arm, and then switches their positions so that they’re dancing with Peter’s back to him, nearly cheek to cheek, with Tony’s chin notched over the kid’s shoulder. At least this way he can’t see Tony’s face, which must, at this moment, be giving away all his secrets. 

“Not so bad, right?” 

“No,” Peter says. “No, I think I could get the hang of this.”

They sway there for a while, looking over the moonlit garden. 

“Mr. Stark …” Peter starts.

But then the balcony door creaks and Tony takes a big step away from Peter and turns, slipping his hands into his pockets to look casual. Pepper is in the doorway, looking curiously between the two of them, a little wrinkle forming in between her eyes.

“Tony, the president is asking to see you. Wants to talk about another defense contract, I think. Could you …” 

“Sure, Pep. Be right there.”

He turns his profile to Peter, but doesn’t look at him directly, not yet.

“Have Natasha take you for a turn around the dance floor, kid,” he says, giving him a quick slap on the back. “She’s good at leading, and I think I may have taught it to you backwards.”

“Um, sure thing, sir.”

“Have a good night, Pete,” he calls back.

But he doesn’t wait for Peter’s reply before he’s following Pepper back inside.

*

Peter’s head is still a little floaty. Maybe from the dancing, or maybe from the champagne, or maybe from something else entirely. That conversation with Tony, that dance, is running through his head on a loop as he wanders back into the house and through the ballroom, which is still crowded, even though it’s well past midnight.

Peter feels something prodding gently at his mind and looks up to see Wanda being led around the dance floor by Bucky, but staring at Peter, eyebrows arched in concern. She does that sometimes when she’s too far away to physically check in, just sweeps the surface of their minds for distress. But she always lets them know she’s there, at least after the first few awkward times.

 _I’m fine, I’m fine._ Peter thinks hard in her direction. _Going for a walk._

She nods at him, and he feels the mental pressure slip away. 

He takes a few wrong turns through the big house before he finally finds the front door and steps back out into the night. He’d really rather go for a swing than a walk, but he’s so distracted that he doesn’t quite trust himself to do that.

Instead he chooses a direction at random and takes off, letting his eyes scan his surroundings and taking in a fraction of what he sees. Peter ends up wandering through the old town, down winding cobblestone streets, past building painted in pale pastels and tall iron church spires aged to a flotsam green.

_“You’re wearing my colors, kid. You look gorgeous.”_

Tony’s voice had come out in a possessive growl, his pupils blown wide in an expression that Peter is almost sure was desire. Almost. But there’s still that niggling doubt in the back of his mind. Maybe he’s fooling himself. He wants it to be true so badly that maybe he’s seeing things that aren’t there.

He passes through a manicured park, over a bridge from which he can hear the rhythmic, soothing slosh of water. Then he climbs up and up a hill to the grand cathedral, standing proud and lonely at the city’s highest point.

Surely there was something there in the way Tony had held him so close when they danced, hand slipping from his side to a low, intoxicating spot on his back. Bucky and Wanda both seem to believe it. It’s plausible, isn’t it?

They had been so close, so close that Peter could feel the little puffs of Tony’s exhalations on his cheek, could smell the faint tang of whisky on his breath. And maybe that’s all it is. Temporary lust aided by alcohol and a change in scenery. But it’s more than Peter ever imagined he’d find in Tony Stark’s eyes. At least when they were trained on him.

Sprawling on the steps of the cathedral, Peter looks out onto the panorama of the glittering city spread out below him, and allows himself a small, secret smile. In his chest, something delicate and breakable flutters hummingbird-quick. It feels a little like hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll, this one fought me tooth and claw the entire way and decidedly did not want to exist. I don't know that I necessarily won the battle, but I hope the struggle doesn't show through too much in the reading of it. 
> 
> If you've been reading along, you probably noticed that the Avengers were headed to Zurich and not Geneva in the last chapter. It seems I have mixed up my Swiss cities, and Geneva is, in fact, the place with CERN and the UN and all that fun stuff. So let's just pretend that's where they were always going? 
> 
> Also, there's quite a bit of music in this one. The song Peter listens to on the flight is "Haunted House" by Sir Babygirl. The song Peter, Wanda and Shuri listen to in the hotel is "Make Me Feel" by Janelle Monae, and the balcony song is the Gershwin standard "They Can't Take That Away from Me." I highly recommend the Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong duet if you are seeking it out.


	7. Chapter 7

Peter watches the sun rise over Lake Geneva, and only then begins the long walk back to the hotel. The cold wind that whips through the streets is invigorating. He admires the white caps the form on the surface of the water when he crosses back over the bridge. Then he stops off for coffee and a croissant at a little patisserie, where the owner is just flipping the sign to open. The man is dusted in a pale coating of flour, and gives Peter a crooked-tooth smile while he patters him in French.

Peter doesn’t speak French, but he smiles and nods in a way that he hopes is friendly. He says “Excuse me,” and tries to mime and point his way through ordering. It’s slow, but eventually effective. The croissants are still warm, and leave his fingers slick with butter, and the coffee is strong enough to give him a second wind. He feels himself bouncing a little as he walks. It’s a lovely, peaceful morning. Everything feels full of poetential.

He feels the corners of his mouth tilting up as he spins himself through the revolving door and into the lobby. He’s hit first by a wave of warmth that’s shocking in contrast to the bitter temperatures outside, and second by an open palm slamming itself against the side of his head.

“Wha-“ Peter exclaims in shock, pinwheeling his arms in a shoddy defense. 

“Pietro, why the fuck did you not answer your phone?!?” Wanda shrieks at him. “I thought you were dead in a gutter. Or kidnapped. Or decided to run away to Spain or something.”

“Uh …” Peter says, astutely. He digs through his pocket and pulls out his phone. It is, of course, dead. “Sorry?”

“You little shit. He’s fine!”

The last is shouted back to where the rest of the team have gathered, camped out in one of the lobby’s sitting areas, all of their bags piled together in a mountain of luggage nearby. She tugs him over to the rest of the group.

“I checked your room, and the bed hadn’t been slept in, and all your things were exactly like we left them. Where were you all night?”

“Just … Walking?” 

“Just walking? What the fuck, Pietro?”

“I just needed some time to think,” Peter says.

She gives him an intense stare that means she isn’t accepting his explanation at all, but will wait for a more private setting to grill him. Then she puts just the smallest bit of pressure on his mind, and he gives her a pinch on the arm in retaliation.

“Hey,” he says. “Cut it out, we talked about this.”

“I told you he’d be fine,” Bucky says as they approach. He’s sprawled out on the ground, leaned against the luggage mountain with a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. “He’s goddamn Spider-Man. Christ on a cracker.”

“We were all worried, Buck. You know it,” Captain Rogers says, striding up directly into Peter’s personal space.

“Don’t start with me this morning, Rogers.”

The Captain shoots Bucky a sharp glance.

“Glad you’re alright, Son,” he says, clasping Peter’s shoulder just a bit too tight. Peter doesn’t bother to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. “We should talk about proper check-in protocol, though. You had your team worried.”

“All due respect, Captain, I’ve been gone for less than eight hours. I think I can be forgiven for thinking I might not cause an all-out panic.” 

“Be nice to the Captain, Spiderling.” Natasha says, coming up and ruffling his hair. “We were worried.”

Then she pulls him past the group, turning him in the direction of the reception desk, and leans down to whisper in his ear.

“Some of us more than others.”

And there’s Tony, gesticulating wildly to a pair of gendarme in navy blue uniforms. He seems to catch sight of Peter out of the corner of his eye and spins on his heel to face him, waving the police officers away testily. 

He looks terrible. His skin is pale and greyish in the early morning light, his beard messy instead of groomed to precise points like it usually is. He’s wearing his red-lensed smart glasses in an attempt to hide dark circles under his eyes. The man’s expression is blank, unreadable, his jaw set in a hard line. 

He just stares for a long moment, then stalks toward Peter like he’s something Tony is hunting, stopping less than a foot away and looking him up and down.

“You’re alright?” he asks, voice hoarse, probably from yelling at the cops.

Peter knows he doesn’t look his best – his suit wrinkled and dew-damp, his tie unraveled and uneven, jacket slung over one shoulder.

“I’m fine, sir,” he says, meeting Tony’s gaze straight on and searching, searching for he knows not what. He can’t understand why the man is so upset. “I’m sorry I worried you.”

Tony reaches out a hand as though to touch Peter on the shoulder, but then he seems to have second thoughts and pulls his arm back, taking off his glasses and twirling them around instead.

He’s not looking directly at Peter, but over his shoulder. He gives a single, firm nod, then walks past him to the cluster of Avengers.

“Alright, children. We found the straggler. Let’s load up the wagons and head out.”

The plane ride back is a subdued one all around. Bucky and Steve, it seems, are still fighting. They sit on opposite ends of the jet and exude icy anger in a way that makes everyone around them uncomfortable. Thor is taking a nap, snoring so loudly that the jet tremors in the air just the slightest bit on every exhale. Clint and Natasha are having a conversation in sign because he says the pressure changes when he flies make it uncomfortable to keep his hearing aids in. 

Mr. Stark is solemn, staring thoughtfully out the window as Peter watches surreptitiously and pretends to be engrossed in a book that Shuri leant him. It’s by a Wakandan writer, some epic fantasy that starts with a young boy and his rhinoceros setting out on a quest. It could be interesting, but Peter can’t concentrate for long enough to follow the plot. He’s read the same passage now about five times, and he’s got nothing.

He can’t still be pissed about Peter not answering his phone, can he? He’s charged the damn thing now, and he’s got 12 missed calls from Wanda and a series of texts that escalate from gentle inquiries to death threats. There’s only one from Mr. Stark: “ _Kid, just let me know you’re ok.”_

He feels guilty even though he knows he has no reason to be. Tony hasn’t said a word to him since that little confrontation in the lobby, and Wanda keeps shooting him wary glances like he’s trying to keep some big secret from her. Which he’s not. Not really. He’s just not sure how to talk about what happened last night with anyone yet. It feels like something he has to keep close and secret, or else it will be shattered. 

He doesn’t even want to dwell on it all anymore. It’s making him feel like there’s something constantly twisting in his stomach, alive and unsettled. It’s not actually a nice feeling. Not with Mr. Stark steadfastly ignoring him. He needs to put himself to use. Needs to lose himself in a project. He’s got a little travel tool kit with tiny screw drivers and picks in his carryall, and he pulls it out, then unclasps one of his web shooters. They’re really due for a tune-up anyway.

He’s got the entire thing disassembled, and he’s carefully clearing out and oiling one of the web dispensing channels when the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and he knows he’s being watched.

He flicks his eyes over and sees that Mr. Stark’s gaze is trained on him. But specifically it is trained on his bare left wrist. Oh his scar. _Shit._ Peter self-consciously pulls his rolled-up sleeve down his arm. He blows gently on the web dispenser to make sure it’s clear then quickly reassembles the web shooter and straps it back on. Then he slinks down in his seat and pretends to nap for the rest of the trip. But he definitely can’t sleep.

When the jet lands, Peter waits for Mr. Stark and the others to depart before he gathers his things and exits. He plans on slinking back to the lab and just losing himself in coding for a few hours, but he stops abruptly on the gangplank when he sees Bucky grappling with the Captain. Rogers gives Bucky a final shove.

“Go put your armor on,” he says in a growl. “We’re finishing this.”

Then he stalks off. Peter gives Bucky a look that very clear says “What the fuck?”

“Apparently I offended the guy,” he says with a shrug.

Then he walks away, leaving Peter alone on the tarmac, confused and worried. It’s not that he doesn’t think Bucky can handle himself in a fight. He knows he can. But there had been something dangerously unstable in the Captain’s eyes that he doesn’t like, and he figures it can’t hurt for him to just observe them sparring. He can pretend he’s running laps or something. Just in case. It’s not that he relishes the thought of laying Captain America out, but he can if it comes down to it. He’s a lot stronger than he looks.

He’s so distracted by thinking over what’s going on with the two of them, that he doesn’t initially notice Mr. Stark rocking nervously on his heels outside of Peter’s room.

“Sir?” he asks.

“Hey, Pete,” Mr. Stark says. His voice is strained, but not necessarily angry. “I wanted to talk to you about your memory issue. Think I’ve got something that just might do the trick.”

“That’s amazing, sir. But can we maybe hash it out later?” 

Why does he look like Peter just kicked his puppy? He really hasn’t done anything this time.

“Um, sure kid. Just find me whenever you’ve got some time.”

“I just, I have to go make sure Captain Rogers doesn’t actually murder Bucky?”

“You sure you wanna get in the middle of that fight, Pete?” he asks.

“I do not,” Peter concedes, opening his door so he can put his things away and change into workout gear. “Definitely not. But I feel like I have to.”

“Steve …” Mr. Stark starts, following him in.

“Has been acting really strange and aggressive lately?” Peter interrupts. “Yeah, I noticed. That’s why I gotta go. I swear, they almost had a fist fight in the middle of the dance floor last night.”

He strips off his wrinkled suit pants and shirt and digs through his drawers for some sweats.

“Well that would have certainly given everybody something to talk about.”

Peter wriggles into some sweat pants and then turns around to find Mr. Stark with his back to him, face to the door.

“I think that might have been the only thing keeping the Captain from throwing punches,” Peter says, absently. “Mr. Stark, what are you doing?” 

“Huh?” he asks, turning his profile to Peter, but not turning his body around. “Just giving you a little privacy, kid.”

“Right …”

Peter grabs a t-shirt off his bed that luckily doesn’t smell too foul, slipping it over his head and walking past Mr. Stark. He may be acting off, but at least he’s started talking to him again.

“Gotta go,” he says. “I’ll come find you later?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” 

Captain Rogers and Bucky are circling each other slowly when Peter enters the gym. The two barely glance at him when he enters, making his way over to the corner where the equipment is set up. He hops on a treadmill and cranks it to it’s highest setting so it presents a little bit of a challenge. He’d do weights or something, but it always feels like cheating, even though he’s just pretending to work out. He can lift a bus. The barbells feel like those inflatable weights that come with strong man Halloween costumes.

He can tell that both men have already gotten a few blows in. There’s a red mark under Bucky’s right eye that looks like it may turn purple in a few hours, and the Captain’s hair is dark with sweat. 

As Peter watches, it’s Bucky who breaks their little standoff, dropping down to the ground, to brace himself on his metal arm and sweep the Captain’s legs out from under him. He’s on top of the man in an instant, using the weight of his prosthetic to hold Rogers down while he rains blows down on him with the other arm.

They grapple and twist until Rogers reverses their positions. Peter can hear the crack of Bucky’s nose breaking when the Captain’s fist connects, and he winces. Bucky kicks out of the grapple and jumps to his feet, pulling back away from Rogers and wiping a trail of blood from under his nose with the back of one hand.

“That all you got?” he says with a vicious grin.

The Captain growls at him, jumping up and pelting toward Bucky with breathtaking speed. At the very last moment, Bucky ducks out of the way, spinning around and leaping so that he lands with his knees braced on the small of the Captain’s back and hooking the elbow of his metal arm around his neck in a choke hold. It’s all exceptionally smooth and graceful, like they’re performing a savage ballet.

The two struggle together, Rogers bloodying Bucky’s lip with an elbow to the face, Bucky giving him a nasty-looking scratch down his cheek with one of his mechanical fingers. But he doesn’t release his hold on the Captain’s wind pipe. Rogers staggers and grunts, and Peter thinks he might just pass out, but then he reaches out and taps Bucky’s arm twice.

Then Bucky’s sliding down the Captain’s body, and hitching a shoulder under the man’s arm to support his weight. They’re both breathing hard and dripping sweat and blood. And then Rogers is reaching out and pulling Bucky’s head in until their foreheads touch. He closes his eyes and sighs softly.

And suddenly it’s very clear to Peter that he should not be there. He powers down the treadmill and slips out of the room as quietly as he can. Well, that certainly sheds some light on why Rogers has been acting like a dick lately. He wonders if Bucky has put the pieces together yet.

*

The things Tony Stark would like to do right now include: crawling into the bottom of a bottle of Macallan and staying there for a week, calling up the Iron Man suit and blasting something big and scary into its component elements, pulling Peter into his arms and kissing him until the kid can’t remember his own name.

But he doesn’t do any of those things because he really is trying to be a good person, no matter how much his subconscious whispers at him that a good person wouldn’t want any of those things in the first place. 

He’s already let himself go too far. He clearly made Peter so uncomfortable last night that he ran the fuck away. Tony had come as close as he had in a good long while to having a panic attack that morning when Wanda had come knocking at his door shouting about Peter never coming back to the hotel last night. Logically, he knows the kid can take care of himself, but the more primal part of his mind put him right back in the last moment when he’d lost Peter. Seeing the kid crumble into dust on a loop in his head had not been a particularly good way to start the morning. He may have been a bit too transparent with his fear when Peter had showed up at the hotel in plenty of time for their departure flight, unharmed and looking shockingly cheery.

So he’s decided to try out a distant, helpful approach now, like he always should have taken. But he doesn’t trust himself to keep that distance. He’s weak, and bad at impulse control, and if he doesn’t keep it together he’s afraid he’s going to scare the kid off for good.

Which is why he seeks out Bruce in the medical lab where he’s running blood samples through a centrifuge. Probably working on another Hulk cure. No matter how many times Tony insists to Bruce that the Other Guy can be a boon to them, that he’s a hero in his own right, Bruce never really believes him.

A part of Tony really doesn’t want to have this conversation, but if he’s going to handle himself with any kind of honor and integrity, he needs a little support.

“I need to invoke the Barcelona Protocol,” Tony says as he slips in behind Bruce to take a look at the readings he’s examining.

Bruce startles a little.

“Jesus, Tony, could you warn a guy? We’ve talked about this.”

“Please, big guy, we both know you’ve got complete control.”

“I do not, and you know it, so I would appreciate a little warning before you jump out at me,” Bruce says, making his grumpy eyebrows, which Tony finds secretly charming.

“I didn’t jump,” he says. “There was no jumping.”

Bruce just stares him down.

“What’s the Barcelona Protocol?” he asks after a beat.

“You don’t remember Barcelona?”

“I remember a tech conference in Barcelona.”

“Exactly.”

“Gonna need a little more than that, Tone.”

“You really don’t remember?” Tony asks. “Okay, so we were in Barcelona. I met a very lovely Spanish physicist who was, uh, maybe on the youngish side, and part of the way through shooting my shot, I realize that there was a non-zero chance that I slept with her mother a number of years before.”

“That number being more or less equal to the age of said Spanish physicist.”

“You do remember!”

“I remember having to explain to you why continuing to hit on her was a very bad idea.”

“You did. You explained it very well, Brucie. And in the end I left the physicist alone, and you and I went to get tapas, and a great time was had by all. Can you get Iberico ham imported, do you think? ‘Cause I’ve just had a strong craving.”

“Does the Barcelona Protocol mean you need tapas? Because in that case I think you could’ve just said that, and I wouldn’t have had to recall a gross story about you.”

“No, the Barcelona Protocol is not tapas related. The Barcelona Protocol is what I invoke when I need you to be my conscience because mine is on the fritz.” 

“I don’t remember agreeing to this,” Bruce says, drily.

“There may have been several bottles of Garnacha involved.”

“Tone, I’ve really got a lot of work to do.”

Tony decides it’s time to drop the chipper act. He’s been running on his default setting as a kind of protection against all the things he’s feeling, but that’s not working now. He looks directly at Bruce for the first time. He knows he looks like shit – bedraggled and sleep deprived and just a little soul sick.

“I really need you here, Bruce,” he says.

Bruce pulls him over to a couple of chairs situated by a bank of computers.

“What’s going on, Tony?” he asks seriously.

Tony’s tongue sticks around the words. Bruce has seen him at a lot of low points in his life, and vice-versa, but this might just be a new level. The disappointment in his eyes is going to hurt.

“I think,” Tony says slowly. “I think I’ve developed feelings. For Peter.”

“Feelings?” Bruce echoes. “For Peter. Peter Parker?”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Tony says, burying his face in his hand so he doesn’t have to look Bruce in the eye.

“What sort of feelings?” 

“What sort of …” Tony looks up, huffy, because Bruce is really gonna make him say it. “Romantic, Bruce. Romantic feelings. I … I think I’m in love with him.”

“Well,” Bruce says. “It’s not exactly conventional, but I guess it kind of makes sense.” 

Tony’s mouth opens and closes a couple of times before he’s able to get actual words out.

“What the fuck, Bruce?”

“I’m just saying, you two have a lot of interests in common, he’s on your level intellectually, he’s definitely your type physically, you went through a very traumatic incident together …”

“That is not what you’re supposed to say,” Tony says, feeling the indignation rise. If he can’t depend on Bruce to shoot straight with him, what can he depend on?

“What am I supposed to say?” Bruce asks, calm in reaction to Tony’s agitation.

Tony splutters at him. 

“You’re supposed to be my conscience!” he shouts. “You’re supposed to sit me down and give me your ‘I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed’ face and say ‘Tony, under no circumstances are you allowed to fuck Peter Parker.’”

Bruce eyes him warily.

“Why am I supposed to say that?”

“Because it’s wrong,” Tony insists. “Because it’s emotionally twisted, and mentally unhealthy, and morally wrong. He’s a kid.”

“He’s not actually a kid, though.”

“He was when I met him,” Tony says, speaking as though he is punching something. “He was 15. He played with Legos and had a curfew.”

And, ok, now Bruce is looking at him with sour distaste on his face, and Tony actually sighs with relief because finally. _Fuck. How hard can it be to get a little flagellation around here._

“Did you …” Bruce begins, actually physically recoiling from Tony minutely. “Did you want to sleep with him when he was 15?”

Tony’s eyes bug out of his head a little because Bruce actually thinks he could …

“Jesus fuck, Bruce, no,” he answers, sharply. “I’m not an actual human monster. This is a recent development.”

“So since …”

“I don’t know, Bruce,” he says, gesturing wildly. “Since a while after he came back, I guess. It kinda surprised the hell out of me. It’s very new, and very unfortunate.” 

Bruce lets out a long sigh and sags a little.

“Well, that’s ok then.”

“Wait … What?”

“You’re both consenting adults, Tony, and you’re not potentially related, so the Barcelona Protocol doesn’t even apply here.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening right now.”

“What’s happening?”

Tony turns to see Natasha striding into the room. She lays a plate with a sandwich and some apple slices on the table near Bruce’s elbow and leans against him a little, scratching her fingers through the short hairs on the back of his neck.

“What did I miss?” she asks him with a fond smile.

“Tony’s in love with Peter,” Bruce says, his voice muffled through a bite of pastrami and rye.

Tony sinks down a little in his chair so as to make himself a smaller target for her inevitable attack. He’s seen the way Natasha is with her Spiderling, and it’s more than a little protective. 

“Boze Moi, finally,” Natasha says, which is not the physical attack that Tony had been bracing for.

“What?” he asks again, brain spinning.

“I’m just saying, the flirting is getting a little stomach curdling. I don’t actual care what you two get up to behind closed doors, but I don’t need to picture it,” she says, sticking her tongue out and making a face.

“We don’t get up to anything behind closed doors,” he says, holding his hand up, palms open, in defense. “I swear.”

 _Intensive spooning does not count,_ he tells himself.

“Well, maybe you should change that, because the Spiderling does seem a little on edge, lately. Just please, for the love of God, don’t give me any of the details. And keep it out of the common areas.” 

Tony thinks his brain might be broken. Is he having a stroke? Did he break down and try some of the good drugs, but is so wasted he can’t remember?

“Peter doesn’t flirt with me,” he says weakly.

“Sure,” she snorts. “Whatever you wanna tell yourself, Stark.”

His brain is buzzing with he’s not sure what. Possibilities, maybe.

“You,” he says, pointing back and forth between the two of them. “Are both very bad consciences.”

Then he wanders out of the room and back in the direction of the engineering lab. Thinking, thinking. They’re wrong. Of course they’re wrong. But the blasé way they had both reacted to his wrenching confession gives him pause.

 _You know what, no._ In the end, it doesn’t even matter if Bruce says it’s ok for him to pursue Peter, because Peter’s in love with someone else, isn’t he? Yes, he is. He’s loves someone.

Someone who doesn’t love him. Someone who Peter’s given up on. And if that’s true then maybe, maybe … _Maybe what, asshole?_  He asks himself. _What are you gonna do?_

He doesn’t want Peter to feel uncomfortable, or to ever doubt that he can depend on him. But Bruce hadn’t even blinked at the idea of him and Peter together, and Natasha hadn’t beaten him within an inch of his life. And it’s not like the kid has ever shied away from his touch. It’s not encouragement, exactly. But it’s … Something.

Perhaps if Tony explains himself, if he moves slow, if he takes the time to woo him. He could, he could maybe do that. Obviously the kid doesn’t have any feelings for him yet, no matter what Nat says. But Tony fancies himself a persuasive guy. He can be charming, when he wants to be.

It’s a chance. A small one. And his heart beats a little faster at that thought. He has to do it carefully. He has to do it perfectly. But he thinks it can be done.

It’s like the feeling Tony gets when the idea for a new invention first strikes. The pieces haven’t slipped into place just yet, but he knows they’re all there, ready and willing to be assembled into something spectacular if he does the work. And they could be spectacular together, if only he can convince Peter to give him a chance.

*

“Ouch, ouch, fuck,” Bucky hisses as he sets down his beer and sucks his busted lip into his mouth.

“Yeah, alcohol and open wounds don’t mix there, buddy,” Sam says, laughing at him unashamedly. “I feel like you should know this by now.”

“But I need the beer to help with the pain,” Bucky replies.

“That there is a classic Catch-22.” 

Peter feels like he’s stepped into a warm bubble separate from the rest of the world. Wanda had dragged him off from a conversation late that evening with Mr. Stark to grab tacos with Shuri, Sam and Bucky.

Mr. Stark has come up with a plan to use his Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing system to translate some of Wanda’s memories of Vision into code.

_“BARF, Mr. Stark? Seriously?”_

_“Hey, kid, when you’ve created technology that can probe the depths of the hippocampus, you can pick the acronym.”_

_“You were high when you named it, weren’t you?”_

_“I … May have been a little high, yes. It was one of my darker periods.”_

Peter smiles. He’s relieved that Mr. Stark seems to be really talking to him again, and there isn’t too much lingering awkwardness. A part of Peter is still tied up in knots about the other night, and he can’t keep his mind from searching for clues in everything the man does. Surely the level of his concern that morning, the sad look on his face when Peter had abandoned him that afternoon, those mean something, right? _Goddammit, just tell me how you feel!_ He wants to scream.

It’s probably lucky that Wanda had walked in when she had.

Now they’re gathered on the terrace of the No. 5 Cantina. Their little group has been coming here for years now. Every time they come, Sam makes up a story about what happened to cantinas one through four, and everyone groans and rolls their eyes.

The place is a bit of a dive, with sticky floors, jalapeno-shaped Christmas lights strung around the terrace, and gaudy sombreros hung haphazardly on the walls. 

The tacos are not exactly like tacos, but more like what tacos would be if they were run through Google translate and then made by a person who had no actual taco ingredients. But they are warm and spicy and satisfying, and the beer is cheap, if always served at room temperature.

“You realize I’m a certified counselor,” Sam is saying, turning Bucky’s head this way and that to examine the damage. “If you and Steve are arguing, you don’t have to beat the shit out of each other. We could try maybe talking it out? Save fist fights for plan B.”

“I don’t know if I’d even know where to start, man.”

Peter snorts at that.

“You got something you’d like to say, Boss?”

“C’mon,” Peter says. “Is it not obvious? That straight boy wants your ass, and he has absolutely no clue how to deal with it.”

“Shut up,” Bucky says sulkily while Sam cackles.

“I’m just saying,” Peter grins over the lip of his beer, a local, malty brew. “Maybe you should take mercy on him and spell it out, ‘cause I’m almost starting to feel sorry for him, and that’s a big step for me.”

“You aren’t allowed to talk to me like that while you’re crying in your corner about how Iron Man will never love you,” Bucky retorts.

“Nope,” Peter says, popping the p for emphasis. “We are not talking about my love life, or lack thereof, anymore. Subject dead. Cause of death, overexposure.” 

He should talk to them, really. He needs advice, needs to know what to do, and if there’s anyone he can go to, it should be his closest friends. But he can’t bring himself to do so. A part of him doesn’t trust them to be objective in this. They’re too invested, have heard him whine and pine for too long, to tell him to let it go even if he should. 

The thing is, he knows whose opinion he really wants. In any other situation, it would definitely be Mr. Stark he went to for guidance. He always has. But he can’t do that this time … Can he? Really, though, what better way could there be to gauge the right course of action. If he kept away from specifics … Peter tries his best to shake off the thought. Tonight isn’t about that.

“You know, I don’t have to deal with any of this kind of drama because I am an actual grownup, and therefore I do not date my coworkers,” Sam says. “If ya’ll sold paper or collated data or had any kind of normal job instead of being super-powered freaks, you would all be fired by now.”

“I feel like super-powered freaks is derogatory language,” Wanda says. “Didn’t your very important counselor training cover things like that?”

“It’s a scientifically accurate term,” Sam quips.

Wanda flips him the bird, and he returns the gesture.

“But, oh my God, you’re so right,” Shuri pipes in, smirking as she looks around the table. “You are all ridiculous.”

“Oh, nuh-uh, missy,” Sam says, shaking a finger at her. “You don’t get to talk either. I’ve seen the way you look at that giant Viking lady Thor brings around sometimes. I am on to you.”

“She’s traveled through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge,” Shuri says, defensively. “She’s scientifically fascinating.”

“And just, like, so pretty,” Wanda says, teasingly, fluttering her eyelashes at Shuri.

Shuri lets out a long breath.

“She’s so pretty, and so scary, and I think I really like it,” she says, talking so fast that the words blur together.

Then she blushes deeply and takes a long swig of her beer when the table erupts in laughter.

Bucky gets them another round of not-quite tacos, and they help Shuri come up with a plan for seducing Valkyrie which includes way too much subterfuge. 

At one point, Sam valiantly puts in a word for “Just asking the scary lady out to dinner.” But he is roundly booed and pelted with tortilla chips for his contribution.

They stumble back to the palace complex only when the wait staff start trying to sweep under their table. The night is beautiful and warm, and Shuri demands a piggy-back ride from Peter because she says she’s had too many beers to walk home. She’s all giggly, and it’s kind of hilarious how low her tolerance is.

“You won’t even notice me, Spider Boy,” she wheedles, so he ends up with her arms wrapped around his neck and his hands gripped around the backs of her knees to hold her steady. 

She screeches when he drops her unceremoniously onto the couch, but he tells her she fine and should sleep it off. Then he heads to bed. It’s been two days since he’s had a good night’s sleep, and he really needs one.

Peter doesn’t even realize where he’s heading until he’s standing in front of Mr. Stark’s room. This is a bad idea. He’s feeling too much right now. Something is going to bubble up out of him that he can’t take back. Still, he knocks, and Tony’s there at the door before he even has a chance to do it twice.

“Kid?” he asks, voice sleep-rough, hair mussed.

“Um,” Peter says, biting at his bottom lip. “I don’t … Is it ok if I …”

“C’mon in,” he says, throwing the door open wide, and pulling Peter into the dark room with a warm hand low on his back, the same spot he’d touched last night. Peter feels his pulse spike. Then the hand is gone and Tony is moving over to the far side of the bed. 

Peter strips down and crawls under the blankets. He lies there in the dark, listening to Tony breathe, and just allowing himself to want. It’s a heavy weight in his stomach that he thinks might just ease if he could reach out and touch Tony, just take his hand. But he doesn’t do that. He feels frozen in place. 

Instead it’s Tony who lets out an irritated huff, then reaches out, places a hand on Peter’s hip and pulls him close, wrapping an arm around his waist and bending his forehead down to rest softly on the base of Peter’s neck.

Peter lets out a sigh and melts into the touch, like a lever has been pulled that releases all the tension he’s been storing up in his body. Their breaths sync, and all Peter can think is that, for now, this is more than enough. It’s perfect. 

*

For the first time since this whole thing started, Tony wakes up with a warm, sleeping Peter in his arms and feels not a hint of guilt. He doesn’t initially trust that feeling. He prods at it gently, like he would a sore tooth, expecting a pang. But he finds that no, no, that weight is actually gone, not just hiding and waiting to jump out at him.

The kid’s skin is sleep-warm, his face dappled by the morning sun, dark eyelashes fanned out over pale cheeks. He wrinkles his nose a little in his sleep, like he’s having an argument with someone wherever it is his sleeping brain has whisked him off to. He is the most beautiful thing Tony has ever laid eyes on. His stomach swoops and glides, and he dares – just now when the kid is asleep – to nuzzle his nose into Peter’s hair and inhale the scent of him, brush his lips in an almost kiss against the bare patch of skin behind his ear. 

 _Peter Parker,_ he thinks. _I am going to woo the shit out of you._

Then he reluctantly untangles their bodies and moves quietly to the bathroom where he shaves and then hops in the shower – warm this time, not cold ( _Take that overdeveloped guilt complex)_ – and closes his eyes to soak it in and let the water relax very tense muscles. He enjoys the sensation and lets his mind wander. It wanders in a truly predictable direction. Peter spread out on his bed, his eyes beckoning. He imagines exploring that wide expanse of pale skin with his lips and tongue and teeth, nipping at the sharp protrusion of a hip bone, kissing the hollows of clavicles, tracing that wicked-looking scar on his chest with his tongue.

He slips his hand down, down, and when he finds his release, it’s with Peter’s name on his lips, a stuttered cry.

Tony presses his forehead against the warm tile of the shower and lets his heart and breath slow. He lets his body sag, loose and free.

*

Peter wakes to the sound of someone calling his name. Someone who sounds like Mr. Stark. He sits up straight in bed, immediately alert, only to find the room around him empty and quiet. His heart is still racing. It must have been a dream. He can’t remember what it was about, but since he didn’t wake up sobbing or swinging, he’ll call it a win.

He’s rubbing the sleep from his eyes and trying his best to shake off the feeling of unease from the way he woke up when Mr. Stark emerges from the bathroom, a towel slung low on his hips. 

Peter tries very hard to school his expression, but he feels his eyes go wide. Mr. Stark has a boxer’s build. He’s compact and wiry. His arms are … Well, operating the Iron Man suit takes more effort and muscle control than people think, obviously. Tony could pick him up with hardly any effort. Hold him against a wall and … His gaze zeroes in on a droplet of water circumventing the glowing reactor in the man’s chest. Peter licks his lips and averts his eyes, reluctantly.

“You up for some breakfast, kid?” Mr. Stark asks, smiling. “We got the old memory download today, right? Gotta eat your Wheaties. Big stuff.”

He seems so relaxed, and it’s a welcome change from the on-edge strain he’s seen on the man’s face for the past couple of days. He wears it well, placid grin on his face, dark eyes glittering with … Something. Peter doesn’t dare name it, but he knows what he wants it to be. 

He shrugs in reaction to Mr. Stark’s question.

“No more pancakes, though,” he says. “You need to expand your repertoire. I’m making you eggs.”

“Just let me get dressed,” Mr. Stark nods.

They eat a companionable breakfast together, then Peter goes to find Wanda while Tony sets up the equipment for the download. 

He finds her in her room, sitting in the middle of a sunburst of Polaroids laid out in every direction around her. He knocks on the door frame to alert her to his presence, and she turns to look at him. 

“I thought I’d refresh myself a little bit, if we’re really going to do this,” she says.

She’s been doing a really good job, recently, of putting on a good face, a happy face, but he can see the sadness now in the turn of her mouth and the lines of tension near her eyes. The guilt hits him. He’s been so focused on his own bullshit, he hasn’t thought a lot about what this has been like for her, aside from his focus on the coding project. _Bad friend,_ Peter thinks to himself. _I’m a bad friend._

He moves toward her, and sinks down, criss-crossing his legs to sit in front of her across the splay of pictures. He reaches out to play with a strand of her long hair. 

“We don’t have to do this, if you’re not ok with it,” he says, keeping his tone soft. “I can try and come up with another way.”

She firms her mouth and shakes her head.

“You’ve done everything you can, Pietro. I don’t want to wait forever for the perfect solution. I want him back.”

“Ok,” he says, clasping on of her hands. Her eyes are brimming with unshed tears, and it’s tearing him apart. “We do this, I can have everything ready in a few days.”

She nods.

“Just … Tell me again, how it will be for him? I’m not … Am I putting ideas in his head, do you think? I don’t want to make him want me.”

“No,” Peter says, sharply. “No, that’s not …”

“Because back with von Strucker, he used to ... No, I used to make people feel things. A lot. Fear mostly. But I know what it’s like, to put something like that into a person, and I don’t want to do that to Vis.”

“It won’t be like that,” Peter says, vehemently. But then he has to calm himself and hedge a little, because does he know what it will be like? All he’s got right now is a theory. Wanda is trusting him. 

“I … My best guess, Wands? It’ll be like he has amnesia. Like a lot of the last few years never even happened. It’ll be almost like when he first came out of the Regeneration Cradle. What I’m doing? It’ll be like he’s watched a bunch of home movies of himself, of his friends, of his family. He’ll know who you are. He’ll know what you were to each other. But I’m not going to force him to do anything, Wands. He’s not an robot. He’s a person. He’s your person.”

She gives him a watery smile, toying with a photo of the two of them, Vision in his more human skin, standing on a bridge overlooking grey-green water. Wanda sees him looking.

“We left a lock on the bridge railing,” she says. “I said it was cheesy as fuck, but he, he said it was a quaint human tradition, and he had a great respect for those.”

She makes a noise that’s half-way between a sob and a laugh.

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Yeah, that sounds like both of you.” 

He waits for her to surreptitiously dry her eyes on the long sleeves of her hoodie before tugging at her hands and helping her to stand. They walk down to the lab together, bumping shoulders every little bit just for the physical comfort of it.

When they get there, Mr. Stark’s doing final checks on the system. He motions Peter to a pair of smart glasses laid out on one of the benches, with subtle electrodes dangling at odd points from the frames.

Peter has Wanda pull back her hair into a messy ponytail, and then he places the thick-framed glasses on her nose and attaches the electrodes to her temples and forehead with a little conducting gel.

“Wanda, don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like such a nerd right now,” he says with smirk.

“Well, then, Pietro, you should cherish this moment.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, it’s the only time in your life you will ever look cooler than me.” 

Mr. Stark snorts loudly at that.

“Hey,” Peter says, snapping at him. “No input from the peanut gallery.”

“Peanut gallery?” he says with an affronted tone. “Kid, I am running the show here. I’m the man behind the curtain. Oz the fucking Great and Powerful.”

“Well, you do have a very big head, sir.”

“Rude,” Mr. Stark says with a wry smile. “Undeniable, but rude.”

Peter makes a few adjustments to the electrodes, and then gives Wanda a soft smile.

“You’re gonna do great,” he says.

Wanda rolls her eyes, but swallows thickly.

“You ready to go, Mr. Stark?”

“Ready when you are, Mr. Parker.”

“Ok, let’s start her up, then.”

Mr. Stark types busily at his bank of computers, and gives Peter a small nod to let him know they’re ready to go.

“So, what am I supposed to do, exactly?” Wanda asks nervously.

“It’s simple, really,” Peter says. “You’re just gonna bring up your memories of you and Vision. The system will take that cerebral input and encode it. Normally we’d use that code to allow you to go back in and change things about the memory. But this time, we’re going to integrate them into the JARVIS code I’ve been modifying.”

“So I just …”

“Why don’t you try telling me a story,” Peter says. “Tell me how you first met.” 

“I’m not a very good storyteller,” she protests.

“Just, give it a go, Wands” he says. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.” 

“Well, we met the day he was born,” Wanda says, her eyes glazing over into a far away look as she recalls, her mouth tilting up in a crooked smile. “I was pretty sure he was trying to destroy the world. But he offered to let me read his mind. That’s not something people generally invite you to do, you know? But he was different. Vision was different to anyone I’d ever met …”

*

It’s masterful, the way Peter leads Wanda through her remembrances, gentle yet precise, urging her to give as much detail as possible. They’re at it for hours, but he doesn’t seem to get testy or tired. Tony can’t help but admire how he works, with a soft, steadying expression on his face.

When he sees Wanda flagging, he cuts her off and tells her they’ll finish up another day, then helps her back to her room.

When he comes back in he breathes a heavy sigh and sort of collapses onto his work bench, laying his head directly on the cold metal.

“You did good, kid,” Tony says, trying to be encouraging. “We’ve got some really good data. I mean, you’re the one who’s been working on the code. You’ll have to see how it all fits together, but I think it’s really promising.” 

“I don’t know how she did it,” Peter mumbles, face still half-squashed into the table. “I honestly don’t think I could.”

“Could what?” Tony asks.

“Sacrifice someone I loved that much,” Peter says, sitting up and meeting Tony’s gaze. “It’s kind of shaming, really. She’s so much stronger than I am.”

“Hey now,” Tony says. “Let’s not go doing that kind of comparison. I think you’ve done plenty sacrificing. Frankly, I’d like to see you doing a little less of it.”

Peter says nothing, his expression remains weary and rueful. He sighs and rubs at his face tiredly.

“Guess I should take a look at that data.”

The kid does try, but it’s clear his concentration is shot, which means Tony’s is shot too, because it’s increasingly hard for him to pay attention to anything when Peter is in the room. He’s trying to finish up the blueprints for the next iteration of the Spidey suit, but his mind keeps wandering to the date he wants to plan for Peter.

He’s thinking a trip overseas. With anyone else he might think of Paris, maybe London, but for Peter he wants something different, something special. He hasn’t forgotten the kid’s reaction to seeing the Large Hadron Collider, and he thinks something more suited to Peter’s specific interests might be in order.

Maybe he’ll fly them to the Canary Islands to see the Grand Telescope. He has a few strings he can pull on to get them some observation time. Cap it off with dinner on the beach, wine, starlight. A bit pat, but sometimes the classics stick around for a reason. He’s already anticipating the look on Peter’s face, that wide-eyed wonder at scientific beauty that he manages no matter how much he’s seen and done.

When Peter sighs for what must be the twelfth time, Tony has to speak up. 

“You’re killing me here, kid. What is going on?”

“Nothing,” Peter says.

Tony levels him with a look that he hopes effectively relates the message: _Do not bullshit me._

Peter bites nervously at his bottom lip, his eyes skittering around the room, landing on anything other than Tony’s face.

“Pete,” he says, more seriously. “Come on.” 

Peter scrunches his eyes closed for a moment, but then seems to come to a decision. He straightens his shoulders and allows his eyes to fall on Tony.

“I need to ask your advice on something.”

“Shoot, Pete.” 

“Ok, um, I don’t know how exactly to … Ok. Ok …” 

“Ok,” Tony agrees, facetiously, moving slowly towards Peter in long strides.

“So, you know the guy I was telling you about? The one I, uh, the one I wanted to bring back, after the Snap?”

Tony stops short, and his stomach swoops. He was not expecting that.

“Lover boy,” Tony says, making a weak effort to keep the bitterness he feels out of his voice. “I remember.” 

“Right,” Peter says, his eyebrows doing a strange dance on his face, as he tracks Tony. “Well, I used to think there was no way he would ever, you know, consider me. But lately there have been some indications that that might be changing.”

“Ah,” Tony says, the word comes out as though he has been punched in the gut. “Indications?”

“It’s just an impression,” Peter says, casting his eyes down to examine his fingernails. “Things he’s done, thing’s he’s said. The way he looks at me sometimes. Just sometimes. It could still be nothing.”

“Right, well, congratulations, I guess, kid,” He turns away, body kicking into full flight mode. He has to actually will the suit not to form around him, but he’d like very much to hide in his metal turtle shell at this moment. Then he turns back. “I’m sorry, you said something about advice?”

Peter doesn’t lift his eyes to Tony.

“I need to know what to do,” he says. “What would you do, Mr. Stark?”

“I thought we discussed this, kid,” he quips because what else is he gonna do? Laugh or cry, those are the fucking options. “You don’t do anything I would do.” 

“I’m serious,” Peter says with a little huff of laughter. “I just … I could lay it all out there. Tell him how I feel. And it could be great. It could be perfect. But if he doesn’t feel the same way, it could ruin our relationship. I don’t think he’d ever look at me the same way again.”

And Tony doesn’t know how Peter manages to look so small, but he slumps in on himself even more. 

“He’d hate me,” he whispers, just loud enough for Tony to hear. “So I need to know what you would do, Mr. Stark. If you were in my shoes. Is it worth the risk, do you think?”

When the kid finally raises his eyes to Tony’s, they’re so wide and so beautiful and so, so fucking sad.

 _Don’t tell him,_ Tony wants to say. _Don’t tell him. Stay here with me._

Tony’s a jerk sure, but he’s not quite a villain, despite his mad scientist tendencies. His chest feels like there’s an entire tank resting on top of it. Who was he fooling, anyway? There’s no way the kid would ever want a washed up, periodically drunk, emotionally stunted old man like him anyway. He’s the golden goddamn future, and Tony is so far in the past he can’t even see the kid’s dust. 

And yet, somehow, he’s still looking to him for guidance. Even though there is literally no one worse to advise him. Tony wants to run. He wants to scream into the void. What he does instead is take a deep breath and lean a hip against the workbench, easing incrementally closer to Peter. He can feel the kid’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t meet them. He’s going to need as many walls up as he can manage.

“What I think, Pete, is that you are operating with a flawed hypothesis,” he says, somehow managing to keep his voice steady.

“What do you mean?”

“Look, kid, you keep talking about this guy hating you. What I am telling you is that if he is even remotely worthy of you, that’s just never going to happen.”

“Mr. Stark, you don’t understand …”

“Nope,” Tony says. “Stop. I’m talking now.”

He braces himself and turns to face Peter, even though he can’t quite bring himself to meet his gaze.

“Peter Parker,” he says. “You are the best man I have ever known. You are brilliant, and kind, and resilient, and honorable, and somehow simultaneously a snarky little shit. Which shouldn’t work, but it does. So what you gotta understand, kid, is that to be loved by you could only ever be an honor. Even if your guy turns out to be the dumbest dummy in the world, and doesn’t feel what you feel, he’s not going to hate you. Never gonna happen.”

Peter swallows audibly, still biting his lip.

“So you’re saying you think I should tell him?” he asks.

Tony’s laughter is full of vitriol. 

“Good to know my eloquence isn’t wasted on you,” he says. “Yeah, kid, you should fucking tell him. Let me know if you need any resources.”

“Resources?”

“Jet planes, submarines, reservations at a very fancy restaurant. However you wanna do the big reveal.”

“So, you think I should make a big show of it?” Peter asks, looking nervous.

“Guess it depends on your guy,” Tony says. “I always make a show, so I’m probably not the best one to ask.”

“Right,” Peter says, taking a deep breath. “Right.” 

“Now get out of here, kid,” he says, giving Peter what he hopes comes across as a friendly tap on the back. He tries not to linger too much on the taut muscles under his palm. “I got work to do, and you’re distracted.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stark,” Peter says, gathering his things.

“Sure thing.”

Once he’s gone, Tony allows himself to feel the full weight of what he’s done. He slumps against a wall, slides down to the floor and closes his eyes. 

He takes a final look at all the little fantasies he’s built up in his mind’s eye – a date to the oversized planetarium, a kiss on the beach, Peter calling out his name in dizzy pleasure, two fucking tooth brushes by the sink. He pulls them up one by one and lets them go, watching them crumble into so much dust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me? Seriously, though, I know that slow burn is kind of on the tin, but even I realize that I may be pushing the boundaries here. I am fighting my instincts to just let these characters banter at each other forever and ever, but I swear some resolution is coming very soon. 
> 
> Also, can we just establish right now that Sam Wilson is the most emotionally healthy Avenger, and everyone should always listen to his advice? I low-key love Sam, and I'm so excited for the Falcon+Winter Solider show that we've been promised. They were made to be in a buddy comedy together.
> 
> As always, thank you all so much for your lovely comments. They have been super encouraging as I write this.


	8. Chapter 8

The next time Tony is really and truly aware of time passing, someone is clearing their throat meaningfully somewhere nearby. He’s fallen into work on his interstellar transportation project, hiding under the base of what, yes, is gonna be a fucking star gate, thank you very much, covered in grease and motor oil and tinkering with a complex circuit.

When he rolls out from under the contraption, Bruce’s face is upside down, staring down at him, and his grumpy eyebrows are mushed together into one massive unibrow of doom. 

“Is this your usual single-minded project obsession, or is it wallowing in guilt?” Bruce asks. “‘Cause I’ve got something for both scenarios.”

“Sorry, dear,” Tony says. “Neither of the above.”

“Somehow that’s more concerning?” Bruce replies. “You know you’ve been at this for a couple of days, right?”

“Huh,” Tony says.

He honestly hasn’t been keeping track, just knows that bad, bad things will happen in his brain if he emerges out of his tech-supported fugue state too soon. It’s nice in here, like a little cocoon.

He’s not trying to be dramatic. He wants Pete to be happy, and he’ll be happy for him. Eventually. Once the sting wears off. Once he feels like he’s back on solid ground. In the meantime, he just plans on keeping to himself. And inventing something Earth-shattering. Pain can be productive. It’s a lesson Tony learned early in life.

“You need to eat,” Bruce says. “And shower. And sleep. And then maybe we can talk about what’s going on with you.”

“Yeah, not really interested in any of those things, big guy. Gonna have to pass. Oh, could you hand me that torque wrench before you go?”

He’s about to slide back under his machine when Bruce literally grabs him under his arms and hauls him up to his feet. Tony frowns at him. It is very unlike Bruce to get physical unless he’s under the influence of the Other Guy.

“You’re gonna want to back off, Brucie.”

“I have Clint and Natasha on standby to come in and haul your ass out of here, if you want to put up a fight, but I’d suggest just going with it,” Bruce says. “Shuri says you’re banned for the rest of the week, anyway. Her minions have been complaining about the noise and the smell.”

“She can’t ban me!”

“Can and did, and I really don’t think you want to challenge her unless you want a permanent injunction.”

Tony glowers. He reaches haphazardly for the smaller components of the machine he’s been working on that he can take to his room. Ban him from the lab. The nerve.

“It’s not healthy for you to keep doing this to yourself, Tone,” Bruce says, trailing behind him. “We all just want what’s best for you. You know that.”

Tony ignores him. He stomps out of the lab, pausing briefly to growl at one of Shuri’s lab minions. Clint and Nat are leaned against the wall outside, waiting for him.

“Alright, Pain and Panic, you can scurry away now. I’m leaving.”

“What did you do, Tony?” Natasha asks, giving him a hard look. Of course she thinks he’s done something to upset Peter, but Tony isn’t in the mood right now to take more abuse. 

“No, no, you don’t get to judge me, Red,” he says, shaking a finger at her. “I did nothing. My conscience is fucking clear.”

He walks away. 

“I’ll bring you lunch,” Bruce calls after him.

“Don’t bother, traitor,” Tony shouts, giving them all a one-fingered salute as he goes. Of course it’s immature, but his tolerance for their meddling is definitely on the wane. Why can’t people just let him deal with his shit in peace? It’s been years since he’s created a killer robot or anything to actually threaten humanity. He doesn’t need babysitters.

When he reaches his room, he starts shucking off his filthy clothes the second the door closes behind him, walking to the bathroom. He turns the shower to its hottest setting. Really, it’s the only thing that will remove the grease now embedded in his skin, and the burn feels cleansing. 

When Tony emerges his skin is red and hot to the touch, like he’s been boiled alive, but he does feel better. He uses a towel to dry his hair as he wanders back into the room in search of clean clothes. Then he stops short, just standing there naked as the day he was born, to examine his bed. _Well, that wasn’t there before._

Sitting on top of the blankets is a brown paper bag, top rolled down. 

"This belongs to you. –P” is written in Peter’s jagged scrawl across the side. 

Tony approaches the bed with trepidation. He reaches out towards the bag a couple of times, then recoiling, before he finally picks it up and examines it.

It’s almost an almost perfect echo of the one he left for Peter when he returned his Spidey suit, back when the kid was just starting out.

Gently, he unrolls the top and shakes the contents out into his palm. It’s … A nano reactor? No, it’s his nano reactor. Tony recognizes the little scrapes along the rim from where he had trouble fitting it inside its casing the first time he used it. It’s the same one that’s currently glowing in the middle of his chest. _What the fuck?_

Tony’s hands shake a little as he turns the reactor this way and that, examining it, looking for a flaw, a tell that will explain what is going on.

It’s definitely the same, but that’s impossible. It makes no sense. His pulse is hammering wildly, and his head feels light in an unpleasant way. Peter had this. Peter had this, and he’s giving it back now, and what does that mean? What can it possibly mean?

Tony dresses more quickly than he has ever done, slacks and his trusty Metallica t-shirt, then slips the reactor into his pocket and rushes out of the room. It doesn’t matter what kind of emotional state Tony is in. Peter needs to explain this, and he needs to do it now. 

He tries the kid’s room first. No dice. But when he checks the living room, he does find Wanda and Clint watching an episode of Dog Cops on the big screen.

“Hey, Sabrina,” he says, sharply. “You seen Pete around?”

Wanda eyes him warily, looking him up and down. His hair is still damp, and he knows his eyes are still bloodshot from a couple of nights with no sleep.

“Why do you want to know?” she asks.

“Because I do,” he snaps. “Is everything an interrogation now? Business.”

“Business?”

“Yeah, we’ve got business.”

“Shh,” Clint tells them both. “Lt. Fluffy and Sgt. Toby are about to have a heart to heart.” 

“TiVo it, Legolas,” Tony says, then he pins Wanda with a sharp look.

“He said he was going for a walk,” she says at last, clearly still reluctant. 

“Went for a walk where?”

Wanda shrugs. 

“I don’t know. He likes to wander, sometimes.”

“Jesus, best guess?” Tony says, twitching with impatience.

“He’s always trying to get me to go up to the Panther cave with him. The one up on the mountain. Maybe he’s up there? I’m not his keeper.”

Well, it’s better than nothing. He ignores Wanda’s call of “You sure he wants to see you, Stark?” and heads for the door.

The second he’s outside, Tony is calling up the suit. The nanites mold around his body, the thrusters ignite and he’s flying up towards the giant panther carving at the crest of the city’s most prominent mountain.

Sure enough, he sees Peter’s small figure there by one of the big cat’s paws, feet dangling over the ledge, taking in the view.

The kid has to see him coming, because he doesn’t look surprised at all as Tony lands and lets the suit retract back into his reactor core. He just looks over at Tony and gives him a subdued smile, and turns back to survey the expanse of the valley below them. 

Peter’s always seemed to like the view from up high. Used to spend a lot of time hanging out on rooftops. It is a lovely scene, the early afternoon sun warming the farmlands beyond the city. So much more green than you ever see in the city. From this angle, it’s impossible to read the kid’s expression, and Tony’s running short of patience.

He stalks closer, but maintains a few feet of distance between them. He’s not really sure how he’s feeling right now other than just the wrong side of too much.

“Got your special delivery, kid,” he says. “Gotta say, I’m a little confused.”

“Yeah,” Peter says, rubbing his face with his hands. “Yeah, I thought you might be.”

He doesn’t stand up, just hunches forward on his elbow and levels Tony with a look. Tony pulls the little reactor out of his pocket and holds it out. 

“What is this, Pete?”

It’s hard to tell, but he could swear the kid is shaking. He takes a deep breath and lets it out before he tries to speak.

“It’s what was left,” Peter says. “Of you, after the Snap. You were dust, but somehow that thing stuck around.”

Peter’s voice is hoarse, like he’s been crying, and as much as Tony knows he would regret it, a part of him just wants to scoop him up and bundle him close. He can’t do that. He feels like they’re on the precipice of something important.

“And you kept it?”  he asks. “Why?”

Peter kicks his feet out, bringing up little puffs of dust, and he runs his hands nervously through his hair. 

“It, um, it used to help me sleep?” he says finally. “You know about the nightmares. And how it … Helps. To be near you.”

A firm nod is all Tony can manage. Words won’t really come, not right at this moment.

“Well, you weren’t there, but that was the closest thing I could find. When I woke up from a dream, I would tell myself that the reactor was your heart, that its pulse was your heartbeat. That it meant you were out there somewhere. And it helped me deal.”

Tony’s heart breaks a little at that. He hates the thought of the kid struggling like that, would give anything to take that hurt away from him.

“Then why …” he starts. “I mean, I’d give you anything you asked for, Pete. Anything you need. You don’t have to give this back. If you need it, it’s yours.”

Peter takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“The thing is, Mr. Stark,” he says, voice tremulous. “The thing is, I’ve gotten greedy. I’m only giving that back because what I want, what I need, is an upgrade.”

Tony’s brain is fizzing, his neurons firing in a hundred different direction.

“Upgrade …” he manages to say.

Peter’s eyes meet his, and they’re wide, and warm, and clouded over with emotion.

“I don’t want some substitute for your heart anymore,” he says, just barely above a whisper. “I want the real thing. Tony, I love you.”

And Tony understands, now, why Peter never used his name before. Because when he says it, it’s just so obvious. Peter loves him. Peter loves _him._ He releases a hysterical, joyous laugh that bounces against the surrounding rock and echoes back to him. He braces one hand against the solid stone. He thinks he might collapse.

* 

Peter does it. He makes the big gesture. He rips his chest open. He puts on the show. And Tony … Laughs. He leans against the mountainside and laughs, the sound a little manic even to Peter’s ears. _Fuck, fuck, fuck._

He can’t. He had almost convinced himself that the answer would be yes. That it would all work out. But no, no. He cringes, and curls in on himself at Tony’s reaction. _Stupid, Parker. Fucking moronic._

Then Tony’s laughter is fading away. 

“Hey, no,” he says, voice taking on a shade of panic. “Wait, kid, no. That was, that was bad, ok? That was the wrong reaction. I’m so, so bad at this. Pete, look at me. Please?”

Peter turns to find him crouched down so that they’re at eye level with one another, still a couple feet away, holding out a soothing hand to him.

“It’s just, you asked me for advice, kid. And I wanted so badly to give you the bad advice, to tell you to forget about your guy. To beg you not to leave me. But I didn’t, and I thought you were gone. I’d thought I’d lost you again, and it … It broke my fucking heart, Pete.”

Tony’s voice is a low growl when he says that. _Broke my fucking heart …_

And Peter’s body reacts before his mind can process. He jolts to his feet, and Tony does too, and then Peter is crashing into him and wrapping his entire body around that strong frame. 

Their mouths clash together, as if drawn there magnetically, and Peter groans into that beautiful, bruising kiss. He tangles his tongue with Tony’s and relishes the burn of his beard against the sensitive skin of Peter’s cheek. He tastes salt, and realizes its his own tears, flowing freely down his face.

Tony doesn’t seem bothered by it. He sucks on Peter’s tongue, and Peter loses strength in his arms and legs, slipping for a second away from Tony’s body before the man grabs him and pulls him back in. He’s got one strong hand on his ass, propping him up, and the other on his neck, fingers stroking, sending little electric shocks across Peter’s skin. 

Then he replaces his fingers with his mouth, licking into the hollows of his neck, and Peter’s eyes roll back. He throws his head back and pants to catch his breath, feeling dizzy with the lack of oxygen and the sheer joy pumping through his veins.

“Say it,” he begs, not even caring how needy he sounds. “Please.”

Tony’s lips on his neck still, and Peter wants to protest that no, no he didn’t mean that. This doesn’t need to stop. But he does stop, tugging on Peter’s neck gently so that their foreheads meet, and he’s looking into Tony’s eyes. They’re so close that he can see the little flecks of green in his dark brown irises. Then Tony reaches up to run a thumb under Peter’s eye, wiping a tear away. 

“Kid, I love you so much it hurts,” he says. “And for the record, you could do so much better than my heart. It’s not exactly in mint condition. But if you want it, you have to know it’s all yours.”

The kiss that follows is soft, slow. Peter melts into it, clinging to Tony so closely that he can feel each breath he takes and, beneath that, the quickened thrum of his heart. This, he thinks, this is how it should always be.

*

He has Peter backed against a stone wall, keening and rocking as Tony sucks a purple mark onto the base of his pale neck, before he realizes that this isn’t where he wants to do this – in a dusty cave with all of their clothes still on, if creatively rearranged. He wants a room, and a bed to lay Peter out on, and a bedside table, and all the accessories he has stashed in the drawer of said bedside table.

He bites down just once more into that creamy skin because, really, who could resist? And then he pulls away. 

“Wait, no, come back here,” the kid says, reaching out and attempting to gently pull him back in.

Tony just laughs and gently releases Peter’s legs so that he’s standing on his own two feet while the kid groans unhappily.

“Why are we stopping, stopping is bad,” he says, swaying into Tony and reaching up for another positively filthy kiss that leaves Tony breathless when he finally maneuvers his mouth away from Peter’s. God, the kid is gonna kill him.

“Not stopping, just hitting pause,” Tony pants. “A short pause. Very short. I just thought … Bed?”

Peter presses himself just that little bit closer.

“So far away,” he says, nuzzling Tony’s neck and giving his ear lobe a nip.

“Yeah, well, knees that are older than 24 years are not made for doing this sort of thing on the ground,” he says. “Give me five minutes?”

He steps back from Peter one more time, calling the suit to form around him again. 

“Well, sure, you can fly. I’ve got to climb all the way back down,” Peter grouses.

“Actually, kid, I was kind of hoping you’d let me sweep you off your feet.”

And then he does just that, scooping Peter up with one arm under his knees and the other supporting his back.

Peter leans his forehead against the Iron Man chest plate and laughs.

“Oh my God, so corny,” he gasps out.

“You know you love it, Princess.”

“Fuck, yes I do.”

The flight back takes seven minutes. Tony may or may not be counting. He lands them as close to the door of the Avengers’ wing as he can, and as soon as the suit retracts, Peter is grabbing his hand and hauling him inside. They sneak cautiously through the common area and down the corridor to Tony’s room, but they don’t encounter anyone.

As soon as the door shuts behind them, Peter pulls him in for another kiss, this time nipping at Tony’s lower lip in a way that makes him literally growl. Peter’s hair is all windswept from the flight, and Tony can’t help but run his fingers through it, like he’s always wanting to do. He tugs, just a little, on the tangled strands, and Peter’s breath stutters.

“Bed. Now,” he says, directly against Peter’s lips. 

The kid nods and scrambles, bouncing as he hops onto the mattress. He leans back on his elbows, and he looks up, and Tony just has to pause a moment, to take it all in, because he’s not sure he ever really believed that this would be happening. That it ever could.

“Get over here,” Peter says, shaking his head at what must be a dumbfounded look on his face. “Please?”

Well, Tony can’t exactly say no to that, now can he?

He crawls onto the bed and straddles Peter’s hips. The kid looks up at him through hooded eyes and stretches up, silently asking for a kiss. His mouth is warm and welcoming, and Tony learns that his favorite taste in the world is his own name, swallowed down directly from Peter’s lips.

And so he spends the next few hours exploring every variation of that very specific delicacy – said in a huff of laughter as he struggles to tug Peter’s shirt over his head without breaking a kiss, in a long moan as he runs rough fingers over the sensitive flesh of his chest, with reverence after Tony unbuckles his web shooters and lays his lips delicately on the pale scars underneath. _Tony, Tony, Tony …_ He becomes a connoisseur. And the last he devours is a shattered cry as Peter comes apart all around him.

*

“How long has it been for you?”

“Hm?” Peter’s lazy, endorphin-addled brain can’t quite make sense of the question. He’s too distracted by Tony’s rough fingers tracing what feel like molecular diagrams on his naked back.

He’s a little obsessed with the man’s hands. Peter’s healing factor means that no matter how many acid burns he gives himself or hours he spends with his hands inside an engine, they always heal. But Tony’s hands have calluses from years of building machines, and scars because he never follows safety protocols – burns from welding and wicked-looking cuts from metal parts that have caught him unawares. They have history and a story. 

Peter turns his head from where it’s pillowed on his arms to look at the man beside him. Tony still looks positively debauched, legs splayed as he leans against the headboard, hair wild, lips still red from Peter’s kisses. The reactor in his chest casts a faint blue glow on his face despite the orange and reds filtering through the room from the setting sun.

“How long since I got laid?” Peter asks, confused. “I mean, it’s been a while …”

Tony throws his head back and laughs.

“Mind in the gutter, Pete,” he says. “I’m so proud.”

His laughter tapers off, and his face grows more serious. 

“No, I mean, how long have you known how you felt? About me. About us.”

“Oh,” Peter says, and he can feel himself flushing. He knows he can’t actually lie to Tony about this, but he’s tempted. It’s just so embarrassing, when he thinks back on it. He takes a fortifying breath and clears his throat.

“Well,” he says. “I was always a little infatuated, I guess? I mean, you were Iron Man, which: cool. Especially when you’re 13.”

There had been all those posters. Aunt May had always given him this weird little smile when she looked at them, and he suspects she had an inkling even then of his sexuality. More of a clue than Peter had at that point, anyway.

“Fuck,” Tony spits out, and he face sort of shutters. Peter hates when he does that, shuts him out of whatever he’s feeling. It’s almost as bad as if he had his faceplate down. This time, at least, he can guess where Tony’s thoughts are leading him.

He rolls up and plants his knees on either side of Tony’s hips so he can look directly in his eyes and cup his face with both palms.

“Hey,” Peter whispers to him. “Hey, don’t do that. Don’t start beating yourself up. Neither of us have done anything here to feel guilty about.”

He tries to keep it together, but this is the thing that really scares him. He worries that Tony will end up running away because he convinces himself it’s for the best. Will decide that Peter’s too young, or that he’s taking advantage in some way. He’s always so good at guilt, whether or not he deserves it.

“If you leave me, you know I’m going to to hunt you down like we’re in some creepy Police song, right?” Peter says, falling back on a joke because his chest hurts a little from the thought. He just got this. He doesn’t want to think about losing it.

The hands that have been lightly resting on his hips tighten, the crescents of nails digging into Peter’s skin, and Tony’s eyes are on his, hot and fervent.

“Just try getting rid of me, kid” he says, darkly.

It sends a shiver of pleasure down Peter’s spine. He buries his face in Tony’s neck and breathes the scent of him in deeply.

“It was when you got on that spaceship,” he says, almost directly against Tony’s skin. “That’s when I knew. You tried to send me back, but I couldn’t let you go alone. It hit me like a punch in the gut. That no matter where you went, I wanted to go with you. Protect you. I thought … I knew you were sacrificing yourself again. Sometimes it’s like you don’t think anybody’s gonna care.” 

“Yeah,” Tony says, rubbing small circles against his hip bones. “Yeah, Pepper wasn’t a big fan of that play, either. It’s why she left, you know? She wanted me to give it up. Stay safe at home.”

Reluctantly, Peter pulls back to look Tony in the eye.

“You know, that’s not what I’m saying, right?” he asks. “I just … When you jump on an enemy spaceship or grab hold of nuke, when you make the sacrifice play, I wanna be there beside you.”

Tony’s eyes are sad, the crows’ feet around them crinkling deeper. Peter thinks they make his face more interesting, but he doesn’t want to be responsible for making them worse.

“And what if that is the last place I want you?” Tony asks.

Peter shakes his head.

“Sorry,” he says. “That’s not the choice you get to make.”

“What’s my choice, then?”

“Just,” Peter starts, with a helpless shrug that leads him to slump down on Tony’s bare chest. He slides his hands down to tangle in the man’s dark chest hair. When he tugs, just a little, Tony lets out an almost imperceptible sigh. “Just whether you can live it. Same as me.” 

They sit there in the silence, lean into it, chests moving up and down in tandem. 

“Well,” Tony says eventually, spoken directly into the now-hopeless tangle of Peter’s hair. “I’m not exactly going to kick you out of bed for eating the same crackers I’m gnawing on, am I?”

Peter flashes him a bright smile.

“It’s gonna be ok, Tony. We’ll take it in turns. You save me, I save you. Maybe we’ll keep score, see who wins.”

“Winner gets a lifetime supply of Jiffy Pop or something?”

“Well, I was thinking blow jobs,” Peter says, smirking. “But sure. Popcorn is also good.”

“Hey, now,” Tony says. “This is an open dialogue, kid. I am always very, very open to your ideas.”

Peter tries, but fails to reign in his laughter.

“Is that so?” he asks through little hiccups of giggles.

“I find myself extremely persuadable when it comes to you.”

“Well, then, I guess I should get to persuading,” Peter says.

Tony gives him a dark, hooded look as Peter slides down his body and makes a space for himself between his legs. He has already tasted so much more of Tony’s skin than he thought he would get to taste. 

He doesn’t quite trust it yet, that this is a thing he gets to have, that it isn’t going to be taken away from him. He’s trying, but in the meantime he can feel the recklessness in his veins, urging him to take what he can get while the getting is good. He sets about his task with a single-minded devotion, Tony’s hands tangling in his hair as he bites down on a searing moan.

 _Mine,_ Peter thinks. _That’s mine now._ That sound, and every other one Tony has given him since that first kiss. No matter what, they belong to him.

*

Waking up next to Peter now is so much better than it has ever been. Tony doesn’t have to hold himself back. He’s allowed to touch. When the sun hits his eyes, pulling him slowly from sleep, he’s wrapped around the kid, chest plastered to Peter’s back, with a hand on his stomach moving gently up and down with Peter’s sleeping breaths. He nuzzles just a little bit closer and kisses down the long line of Peter’s neck. He feels peaceful in his bones.

The kid stirs under his touch, grumbles in protest. Tony expects him to pull away and bury himself under the blankets, but instead he turns and latches himself onto Tony, arms snaking around his waist and up his back.

“G’morning,” Peter says, blinking slowly, tilting his head up for a kiss that Tony can’t help but oblige him in. The morning breath is real, but it doesn’t seem to bother either of them much as they kiss lazily.

They had hardly left the bed for the whole of yesterday, save for when Tony had made a brief journey out for provisions well after midnight. He’d figured the common areas would be abandoned at that time of night. He had been almost right.

_Tony had been padding past the living room sofa when when a figure had sat bolt upright from the cushions, and Tony’s had clutched dramatically at his chest._

_“Jesus, fuck, Barnes, what are you doing out here lurking in the dark?”_

_Bucky had blinked at him owlishly over the rims of a pair of reading glasses and held up an illuminated Starkpad in explanation._

_“Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d try to read. What are you doing out so late?”_

_“Midnight snack,” he’d said with a shrug, trying to mask the panic at being questioned just at the moment._

_It’s not that he wants to keep Peter like some dirty secret, but he knows how gossip flows around their little group, and he selfishly wants to allow them to stay wrapped in each other for a little longer, at least longer than a handful of hours. And he can’t do that if they have to explain themselves to all of their team members._

_Barnes had followed him to the kitchen to lean against the refrigerator and toss an orange from hand to hand while Tony had made a sandwich, grabbed a bottle of water (They’d just have to share. Serves Peter right for having nosy friends) and made some popcorn, because he thought Peter would be amused at the joke. He sprinkled it with cumin and chili powder because May’s terrible taste in food has infected Peter, and that’s how they’ve always eaten it. Doesn’t matter what the kid says, it is not a fiesta in a bowl. It is, in fact, disgusting._

_“Huh,” Barnes had said while Tony sprinkled on the spices._

_“Something on your mind there, Luke?” he had asked._

_“Just thought Peter was the only one who ate his popcorn like that,” he’d said, eyeing Tony suspiciously. “I think it’s revolting.”_

_“Acquired taste. Kid got me hooked.”_

_And then to, sell the lie, Tony had had to steel himself and pop a handful in his mouth. He chewed resentfully, but managed not to make a face. Tasted like feet and burning._

_“Hm,” Barnes had said. “Better you than me.”_

_Tony had thought he’d gotten away with it until he was leaving the kitchen with his food on a tray, and Barnes had called to him._

_“Hey, Stark.”_

_“Hm?”_

_He’d just barely managed to catch the can that Barnes had chucked at him before it hit him in the face. Whipped Cream. Tony had felt the color drain from his face, but Barnes had just given him a wink._

_“Might come in handy,” he said, and then left the room._

_“I think Barnes is onto us,” he’d told Peter when he’d made it back to the room._

_Peter had only shrugged._

_“I mean, Wanda periodically tries to dig into my mind. I hate to tell you, but this thing isn’t staying a secret for very long.”_

_“Well, shit.”_

_Peter had looked deflated at that._

_“Kid, you don’t think I’m ashamed of you, right?” he’d asked._

_Peter hadn’t answered, just looked up at him with those wide Bambi eyes._

_“I’m not, Pete,” Tony had said, rubbing his fingers vigorously through his hair. “I’m not. I just want to protect our bubble.”_

_“Our bubble?”_

_“You know, the happy little bubble where we get to be just you and me before anybody else gets to weigh in, or ask questions, or have an opinion. I think we deserve a bubble.”_

_Peter had smiled a slow, wicked smile at him, then. Had taken the tray from his hands and sat it down on a table._

_“You’d get bored in a bubble with just me for too long.”_

_“That might be the dumbest thing you’ve ever said, kid.”_

_Then Peter had been pushing Tony up against the wall, fingers fumbling with his belt, lips bruising in their insistence._

Those kissed had been desperate, whereas now they are soft, sleep-sated.

“God, you have no idea, Pete,” he mouths against Peter’s jaw. The barest hint of golden stubble there sends something hot piercing through Tony’s gut. “You have no idea how much I wanted to do this.”

“How long?” Peter asks, his voice coming out in little pants. “How long for you? I showed you mine. Ah!”

The exclamation comes when Tony nips, just a little, at his chin.

Tony maneuvers them so Peter is below him, and he’s propping himself up on his elbows on either side of his head.

“Longer than I realized,” he says, softly, meeting Peter’s eye. “When I realized … It was that night we danced. You just knocked all my defenses down.”

“I knew something happened that night,” Peter says. “It was the first time I thought you might …”

“You aren’t mad that it took me so long?”

Peter rolls his eyes at him, but his expression is light.

“Obviously I was quicker on the uptake,” he says. “ I’m cleverer than you. But you got there in the end, and that’s what matters.”

“Damn straight.”

Peter laughs and bucks a little at the weight of Tony’s body holding his down.

“You just gonna stare at me, or did you have a plan for this scenario?” he asks.

“Oh, I got plans,” Tony says.

“Yeah, care to share?”

“Well, to start,” Tony proposes. “Hands and knees?” 

Peter’s eyes go wide.

“Yes. Yes, please.”

He nudges Tony off of him and rolls over onto his stomach.

Tony is swirling his tongue around the last notch of Peter’s vertebrae, working his way steadily downward, when there’s a loud knock on the door. The both of them startle at the unexpected noise and end up in a tangle of limbs. Elbows get thrown into some very delicate spots.

Finally, Tony manages to extricate himself and roll off the bed. He grabs for a robe and wraps it around himself before flinging the door open. 

“What?” he asks, sharply.

Steve is outside the door in his leather armor, helmet in his hands.

“Training at 0900,” he says. “Just wanted to make sure you were up.”

Tony wraps the robe around himself a little bit tighter and makes sure the door is angled so the bed is hidden from the outside. 

“Can’t,” he says, eloquently, because, seriously, fuck that.

“Can’t?” Steve says, incredulously. “Tony, you really have to take this seriously. Team cohesion is very important.” 

“Sorry, Capsicle, I’m sick,” he says.

And then he fakes a truly pathetic cough, and follows it with a shrug.

“Doc’s orders. I’m out of commission for a few days.”

Steve huffs at him and taps his foot in irritation. “Really?”

“Are you saying my health isn’t important to you, Steven?”

“Fine, rest up. But you better be at the next one.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n,” Tony says with a little salute. “Oh, the kid’s sick too. Lab contamination. You know how it is.”

“Great,” Steve grumbles as he walks away. “Just great.”

Tony slams the door and then slumps against it. On the bed, Peter is red in the face from trying to hold in his laughter.

“I cannot believe the Captain bought that lame excuse,” he says.

“Yeah, well, we were lucky, kid,” Tony replies. “Rogers is just about the only one who would. If Nat had come to collect me, we would be screwed.” 

“So we get to stay in the bubble?”

“For just a little while longer,” Tony says. “Now, where were we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll this chapter is so soft, and so cheesy. It's like the baked brie of chapters, but I've been so mean to these two that I thought they deserved some gooey, cheesy goodness. I have been waiting to deploy Chekhov's nano reactor in this way since I started this thing, and it was so much fun to write.
> 
> I'm a little nervous to actually put this one out there, but I very much hope you find it satisfying.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are no Endgame spoilers here, but there is a brief call back to the movie a few sections in. Nothing big, but I couldn't resist. You have been warned.

Peter is squirming just a little bit while Tony leans over his shoulder to look at the screen of one of the lab computers, going line by line over the Vision code. He’s cheek to cheek with the kid, with on arm wrapped around him, fingers stroking absently at his sternum while he reads.

They have been making a conscious effort to avoid touching each other too much while in common areas, but almost everyone else is out for lunch at this time of day. Besides, Tony is pretty sure the only one on the team who doesn’t already know they’re together is Steve. 

Barnes knows. That much is clear. And if Barnes knows then Wanda knows. And if Wanda knows then Sam, and T’Challa, and Shuri probably know. Bruce had caught Tony singing “No Leaf Clover” – entirely too cheerily for the actual lyrics – into a socket wrench the other day, and had given him a look that says he knows, which means Nat knows, which means Clint knows, which means Coulson knows. Their lives are a game of goddamn telephone. 

“Kid, sit still, will ya?” Tony grumbles into Peter’s ear. “I’m almost done.”

“You’re tickling,” Peter says, reaching down to grab the hand that Tony has been using to stroke at his chest.

Tony gives him a little pinch in retaliation, and chuckles at Peter’s minute squeak.

Thor is off-world, and wouldn’t care anyway. Rhodey, off on another military mission, will definitely give Tony his disappointed look, but he’s grown used to that. Steve is the issue. He calls Peter “son” like he’s his drill sergeant, or his high school basketball coach, or his super-repressed father circa 1953. Tony wouldn’t be surprised if Steve challenged him to a duel when he finds out.

Plus, Peter has insinuated that Cap might not be entirely comfortable with the idea of two men together. Tony is inclined to say fuck that and punch Steve in his perfectly symmetrical face, but Peter really seems to want to keep the peace. Damn, he’s already so, so whipped.

He reaches the last line of Peter’s code. Really, it is a thing of beauty. Looking at this, he isn’t at all surprised that Peter is the one, between the two of them, that managed to mix magic and science together to bring them all home. Apparently he has a gift.

“Looks good, kid,” he says. “Well-honed bit of coding.”

“Maybe I should have Dr. Banner take a look, too,” Peter says. “You seem a little distracted.”

“Then maybe you should stop distracting me.”

He spins Pete around on his stool and gives him a long and thorough kiss because brilliance should be rewarded, and not at all because Tony has no self control. When he’s done, he gives the kid’s nose a little boop and then, with great restraint, removes himself to his own workspace.

“So what’s the plan now that you’ve got the code ready?” he asks as he tinkers with a servo motor.

“Well,” Peter says. “You know that really old movie …”

“Hey,” Tony says, pointing at him. “No. We’ve done this bit before.”

“Weird Science?” Peter finishes.

And _ouch._ That one stings

“Ooh. Would we call that an old movie?” Tony says, his voice pitched a little higher than usual. “I mean, really that movie is just entering its prime. It’s got its best years ahead of it. The 80s are cool again, right?”

“Sure,” Peter says. “Sure, whatever you say, Tony.”

“So Barbie doll and a lightening strike?”

“That or I could use the improved regeneration cradle that Shuri’s building for me.”

“Well, it’s good to have options.”

“Gotta leave yourself open for thinking outside the box.”

Heat sparks in the space between them, and they’re grinning at each other wide like idiots. Tony takes four long strides across the room back to Peter’s side and shuffles in close, tilting his head and letting one hand sneak under Peter’s t-shirt to caress the warm skin of his hip.

“I’m thinking very inside the box right now,” he says. “Like inside the very first box. Practically Paleolithic.”

“Well,” Peter replies, leaning in a critical fraction. “There is something to be said for the classics.”

Tony leans down. And that is when a blaring alarm sounds throughout the lab.

“What?” Peter asks, blinking slowly and pulling himself out of the trance.

“Intruder alarm,” Tony tells him. He pulls up a holoscreen to check the details. There it is.

“Looks like unauthorized border crossing in the third quadrant, up here, near the mountain pass,” he says, expanding the image so that Peter can see it, and tapping the entry point. 

Tony’s already calling up the Iron Man suit, and Peter is checking the webbing levels on his shooters.

“Can I catch a ride?” Peter asks as they both head for the exit.

“Sure thing, Princess, but I can’t exactly carry you this time. Hop on?”

Peter does, holding on tight to Tony’s back as they take off flying toward the spot where the alarm was tripped. When they get close, Tony starts scanning for heat signatures. Peter taps gently at his helmet.

“There,” he yells over the whipping wind.  “Looks like five of them.”

“Alright,” Tony says. He knows the others must be on their way, but he and Pete are here first, so they need to act fast. “Let’s roll out the welcome wagon, kid.” 

*

Peter does what he has to say is a very impressive super hero landing when Tony gets close enough to the ground for him to dismount, and the group scatters. He catches one, a burly-looking bald kid, with a shot of webbing at the ankles, and he goes down hard like he’s made of rocks.

Then there’s a flash of brilliant light, and a blur of red, white and blue is streaking towards him. It resolves itself into a Latina girl with wild hair and a very unfriendly expression. Six then, he thinks. There are six of them. She came out of nowhere. He shoots a web out in her direction, but she runs at him. When he tries to flip away, she catches him with a fist to the stomach. 

Peter goes down hard. _What the fuck?_ That hurt. A punch from a normal person would hardly phase him. This girl has power. When he moves to stand his confusion grows because there’s an arrow pointed at his face, and the girl wielding the bow is leaning over him and looking grim.

“You are not gonna want to move, pal,” she says.

From over her shoulder, someone is yelling. 

“Holy shit, you guys, it’s Spider-Man. I’ve read all your comics!”

Peter carefully raises his hands in order to affect an air of innocence. And also it allows for better aim with his web shooters in case the girl makes a move.

Tony has landed by now and is stalking toward bow and arrow girl with his repulsors glowing.

“Oh, baby Hawkeye groupie, you are going to want to back the fuck up off my spider.”

“Gross,” the girl says, making a face and sticking out her tongue.

“Jeff, sick ‘em!” Someone calls out, and then a gray streak is pelting towards Tony and latching onto the leg of the Iron Man armor with its teeth. It looks like a baby shark? But with legs? Peter is beginning to think he might have hit his head when he fell. 

“Off, get off!” Tony is saying, shaking his leg to try and detach the strange creature. “Oooh, you little …” 

The others have caught up with them now. Peter sees Wanda floating toward the ground in a bubble of red light, and Sam swooping in behind her.

“Katie-Kate?”

And there’s Clint.

The girl aiming an arrow at his chest turns her eyes away from Peter.

“Clint?” She says, sounding a little angry, but mostly just lost.

“Hold fire, they’re friendlies!” Clint is shouting to the rest of the team.

The girl, Katie, apparently, drops her aim, arrow falling useless to the ground.

“Clint, you monumental asshole!” she screams, and then she’s sprinting away from Peter.

He lowers his hands and pushes himself up off the ground, dusting some dirt from his clothes. If Clint knows these people, at least they probably don’t present an imminent threat. It’s still confusing, though. How did they even figure out how to get into Wakanda? It’s not exactly common knowledge.

He’s confused until he isn’t, because stepping out from behind a rocky overhang into the bright sunlight, dressed in unrelenting black including eye patch and leather coat, is Nick Fury.

“Fury,” Peter growls. “I thought I kicked you out of the country. You gonna make me do it again?”

*

Tony considers it no less than an act of miraculous diplomacy on his part that he has managed to gather everyone together in the now extremely overcrowded conference room. He’s pretty sure he caught Peter just before he was about to lay Fury out with one good punch, which couldn’t have been good for Avenger-SHIELD relations. 

Pete’s standing against the back wall now, arms crossed, face like thunder, eyes clocking Fury’s every move at the other end of the room. Tony thinks it’s unfortunate how much he looks like a sullen teenager when he’s this angry. Luckily, it’s not an emotional space he seems to visit often. His little group are lined up on either side of him like they’re the usual suspects, wearing similar stoic expressions.

It’s still unclear why Fury has decided to come out of hiding and grace them all with his presence. About the only thing Tony knows is that he brought a motley crew of baby superheroes along with him. As what, back up? Proof of concept? Who knows. Realistically, they’re only a few years younger than Peter which … Does not make Tony’s stomach cramp in unexpressed guilt. No, it does not. 

There’s Clint’s protégé Kate Bishop along with America Chavez - who can fly and punch holes in reality, Omega-level mutant Quentin Quire, some kid name Johnny who can apparently turn himself into rocks, and Gwendolyn Poole, who at this very moment is crouched in a corner of the room picking at the carpet. Tony thinks she’s just being a little weirdo until he sees the carpet sort of lift to reveal something that looks a lot like the red dirt of the path where they picked the trespassers up outside of town. So she what? Creates warps in time and space? Whatever it is, it’s unsettling. Scientifically fascinating, but still.

“Hey, Baby Spice, cut it out,” he snaps at her, and she lowers the carpet back into place contritely.

Yeah, he can tell she is going to be a pain in his ass. It’s her pet who left the teeth gouges in the suit that he’s now going to have to buff out.

Tony’s just about to say that everyone is here, and that they can get started when Coulson bursts through the door, searches the room with his eyes, and finally finds Fury.

“Where the hell have you been, you one-eyed bastard?”

Fury’s face bends into an uncharacteristic wide smile.

“I had business,” he says.

“Yeah, well I’m not doing your job for you anymore.”

“Why not? Things don’t seem to be on fire yet. Though the next time you send Wade Wilson after me I’m going to send you back to basic training. It is a groundwork tenant of SHIELD that I should never have to deal with that mouthy dipshit.” 

Coulson grimaces.

“To be fair, I was a little short on options at the time. You’re not an easy man to track, sir.”

Then the two of them are giving each other the bro-hug, complete with lots of back slapping. Fury showing emotions other than undiluted irritation. Creepy.

In one of the far corners, Clint and Kate are having a whisper-shouted argument.

“Five years, Clint!” the girl hisses at him. “You couldn’t even manage a phone call? I thought you were dead until you showed up smiling and waving at that damn ceremony.”

“Katie,” Clint says, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “I checked in with Ramone to make sure you were ok, but I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me. We had that big fight …”

“We’re always in the middle of a futzing fight, Clint. It’s our thing. That doesn’t mean you don’t call me after an actual apocalypse.”

“I’m sorry, Katie-Kate.”

“Don’t call me that,” she says, but she’s biting her lip and holding in a smile.

“It’s good to see you, Hawkeye,” Clint says, grinning at her.

“Back at you, Hawkeye,” she says after a beat, and nudges his shoulder with her own. 

And Tony has to nip this in the bud right now, because it seems like these kids might just be sticking around. 

“You can’t both be Hawkeye,” he interjects. “It’s confusing, and ridiculous.”

“Hey, I didn’t steal it,” Kate says, defensively. “That name was given to me, and you can’t just take it away because you don’t like it.”

“That’s right Tony,” Clint says, laying a hand on her shoulder. “She’s a franchisee. You’re just upset because you don’t have one.” 

“You are not a Burger King, Clint. You can’t have franchises …”

“Alright, people, let’s huddle up,” Fury says, cutting off the sniping.

He stands at attention at the head of the conference table now, hands behind his back, letting his eye wander from face to face. 

“I’m glad you’re all getting to know each other, because you’re going to be working very closely together.”

Peter’s snort of derision carries from the back of the near-silent room.

“Yes, Parker, I’m well-aware of how you feel. What do you want me to say? You were right. I was wrong. But now we have other things to worry about.”

“It’s funny, because it sounds like an apology, and yet it is not.” 

“We have other things to worry about,” Fury says again, talking over Peter. “The world, in case you fine folks haven’t noticed, is in chaos. World governments haven’t exactly recovered from having half their populations disappear and then reappear. And there’s no telling where the next global threat could be coming from. Thanos is not the only big bad around. We have to be prepared.”

He stalks around the room, stopping behind Kate’s chair and leaning on it.

“So, allow me to introduce a few of your new recruits, the West Coast Avengers. I expect you all to report to the Avengers compound in New York next week to begin training and recruitment efforts.”

And Tony’s kind of surprised at how much he likes Fury’s plan. The Avengers compound full of people again, a team of newbies to train up right. Kids who might not make the same mistakes he has. Who’ll be better.

“We do not need training,” the one called America pipes up from across the table. 

“All due respect, Miss Chavez, you do,” Fury says. “Plus, this is not optional for you. You all signed contracts.”

“Well, we didn’t,” Peter pipes in. “The Avengers do not work for SHIELD. Not anymore.”

Ooh, the kid is salty today. But Tony thinks about how he would react if anyone had suggested to him that he just mourn Peter and move on, and he understands a bit. At least part of the sass is on Tony’s behalf.

“You are a pain in my ass, Parker,” Fury says.

“I’m with the kid on this,” Steve says.

Peter does a literally double take, and Tony tries to suppress a laugh.

“I’m sorry, what?” Peter says, blinking rapidly in confusion.

“Peter’s right, director,” Steve says, nodding at the kid in approval. “We may be able to find common ground, but we won’t report to you. Not again.”

Fury huffs and crosses his arms. 

“Believe it or not, Rogers, I am not primarily concerned with chain of command at this moment. Am I the only one worried about the wars that are going to come to our door now that the universe knows all about us and our biggest, pointiest sticks? Am I pissing into the wind here, people?”

“What exactly do you have in mind, sir?” Steve asks.

“A full training program for as many powered individuals as we can dig up. Patrol schedules and on-duty rosters. Plans for full deployment of forces should a global threat arise. That seem sinister to you, Cap?”

“Seems reasonable enough,” Steve admits. “We’ll consider it. As a group.”

“Be my guest,” Fury says, spreading his arms magnanimously.

“At a later time,” Steve says.

“And we won’t consider it at all until you throw out whatever contracts you’ve had these kids sign,” Peter interjects. “You don’t get their souls or their first-born.”

“Agreed,” Steve says.

Fury curses under his breath. It is, pointedly, not a no.

“Well,” Tony says, deciding to steer things to more friendly territory. “This has been a thrilling discussion, but might I suggest pizza party? Everyone? Pizza? Topping requests? Fury, you know I got you down for some ham and pineapple. Bruce, the rabbit food special, right? Anybody else?”

Peter raises his hand.

“Sausage and peppers?” he asks.

Tony points to him. 

“And sausage and peppers for the kid.”

*

A couple hours after that unexpected team meeting, Peter is ensconced in a comfy armchair with a baby landshark curled up in his lap. He’s eaten his fill of pizza, tossing Jeff his leftover banana peppers, and now he’s warm, and full, and content to listen to the buzz of conversation float around him and stroke the little creature’s skin, which is surprisingly cool and smooth to the touch.

The meeting itself hadn’t gone nearly as bad as he was expecting. Peter still doesn’t trust Fury, but he’s not unreasonable enough to think that none of his ideas have merit. He’s right that the Avengers need to get back to business. He’s right that they could use fresh blood. 

Peter’s had a mental block about the future. For the past five years it feels like all he’s be able to manage is putting one foot in front of the other, completing the next step of the thing that absolutely has to be done – bring back Tony, bring back half the world, bring back Vision. But now he’s so close to those tasks being done. And it’s like fog melting away under intense sunlight. He’s starting to see a little bit of what could be.

He’s good with teams. He hasn’t always been, but over the years he’s found he likes it. Likes finding the rhythms of specific groups and tweaking them to work in better harmony. It’s not that far removed from chemical reactions, gauging which will combust and which will synthesize.

The new recruits are heading back to New York tomorrow. Tony’s granted at least permission for them to stay at the upstate facility until a decision is made. There’s still uncertainty, but it could just work, all of them together. 

He looks around the room to find Bucky and Wanda sitting at the big dining table with America trying to teach her one of Wanda’s very complicated Sokovian dice games that Peter is pretty sure are rigged in her favor, and at Clint and Kate on the couch finally smiling at each other and looking at pictures of Clint’s dog. It’s nice. Even the background noise of the girl Gwen chewing out that pink-haired kid over by the windows doesn’t do much to disrupt the general pleasantness of this.

“You can’t have one.”

Tony’s voice comes from Peter’s right. He turns his gaze away to blink up at the man. He crouches down so that his eyes are on Peter’s level, hand grazing his ankle surreptitiously.

“Hm?” Peter prompts hazily. It takes effort to pull himself out of the deep well of his thoughts and back to the present.

“You can’t have one,” Tony repeats, jutting his chin out to indicate the tight little gray ball that Jeff has curled himself into. 

Peter’s never had a pet, actually. Their apartment didn’t allow them, and besides there were times when it was hard enough to feed just Aunt May and himself, much less something else. But it might be nice, actually. A dog? Or a cat maybe to start because they’re more independent and less likely to die should Peter forget about it in a scientific binge. He probably wouldn’t do that, right?

“Why not?” he asks. “A pet might be nice. We could get a lab cat?” 

“Do you want giant chemical-green kittens hell-bent on world destruction, because that’s how you get giant chemical-green kittens hell-bent on world destruction.”

Peter snorts.

“Alright, a non-lab cat. What’s wrong with a pet?”

“Pets are bad news,” Tony insists. “They’re a gateway drug to babies.”

And … Peter’s brain fuzzes out.  The only thing left in his mind is this image of Tony with a little girl hoisted onto his shoulders. She’s got brown pigtails and Tony’s smile and … Peter feels himself blinking rapidly. Where did that even come from?

“No,” Tony says, shaking a finger at him. “Oh no. No, no, no. Don’t you dare get that look on your face. That’s not … It was a joke!” 

Peter feels his mouth lift up at the corners against his will. Not yet, certainly. They’re not there yet. But he can’t deny the idea has a certain appeal, and that the image makes his heart feel like it’s just a smidge too big for his ribcage.

“We’ll put a pin in it,” he says, voice coming out just a little huskier with emotion than he intends.

“We will not,” Tony insists. “We certainly will not. I mean, how would that even …”

“Start out with a cat,” Peter says, bumping their shoulders together as he lets Jeff down to toddle over in Gwen’s direction. “It’s pinned.”

Tony opens and closes his mouth several times as though he is about to says something, but nothing comes out. Peter gives him a smirk and pats him comfortingly on the back. It’s probably going to take him a while to reset, so he goes over to see if he can join in Bucky and Wanda’s game. 

*

The thing is, it was never going to stay quiet forever. Tony knows that all his efforts were only ever delaying tactics. The bubble couldn’t stay un-popped, and honestly he and Pete have been extremely sloppy about the whole thing.

It’s about six in the morning, and he and the kid have been up all night working on Tony’s Star Gate. They’re waiting on Shuri to finish the regeneration cradle, giving them both a little breathing room to play around with more casual projects. Which naturally leads them to all-nighters tossing around theories and tinkering.

They’re in the kitchen, where Tony is making breakfast and Peter is sitting on the countertop, swinging his feet and humming happily into his coffee mug. There’s a frittata in the oven. It’s a bit of a stretch for Tony’s culinary skills, but he was only able to feed Peter pancakes so many times before he burned out on them and started demanding something with at least some nutritional value.

They are significantly past one-night stand territory, and Tony doesn’t intend to ever go back. Therefor he had to expand his breakfast repertoire.

He’s pretty sure the demand for healthier fare was made mostly with Tony’s health in mind. The kid has been giving him these looks lately when he pours himself maybe one too many drinks in the evening, or says he’s in the mood for a greasy cheeseburger. It’s this soft, protective expression that he can’t exactly be mad at, but also wishes he could scrub permanently from Peter’s face. A part of him is still certain that he will never deserve that degree of concern and care. 

He’s cutting up strawberries for a fruit salad, but it’s difficult to concentrate on the task with Peter sitting right there, within arms reach. He’s got a little smudge of dark engine grease under his right eye, and his hair is a glorious mess. He’s wearing one of Tony’s t-shirts which, yeah, Peter in his clothes is never not going to get him riled up.

Their eyes snag and catch each other, and he hears Peter inhale sharply, watches as his pupils blow wide. Tony puts down the knife and the berries, sticking his thumb in his mouth to catch the excess juices. Peter’s tongue flicks out to wet his lips.

Tony moves over until he’s nestled in between Peter’s legs, hands smoothing the denim on Peter’s firm thighs, stretching up to place a kiss on his mouth. It starts out soft, almost chaste, but then Peter whimpers against his lips like he needs something more, and the control that Tony’s been exercising slips away. His hands grip the kid’s thighs and he pulls forcefully so that Peter’s entire body slips forward, plastered against him. He twines his legs around Tony’s waist and his arms around his neck.

Peter tastes like bitter coffee and sweet cream when Tony slips his tongue past his lips, gently stroking his hard palate with the tip of his tongue. Peter moves his hands up to slide into Tony’s hair and grip, like he needs to hold on tight to something, and that just drives Tony crazy. He can hear his pulse pounding quick and heavy in his ears. He bites down as gently as he can manage – which it turns out is not very gentle at all – on Peter’s bottom lip and Peter groans.

Then there’s a crash behind them, and the kid’s entire body tenses. Tony very slowly pulls himself away from Peter, far enough that he can look over Peter’s shoulder into the living room where Steve Rogers stands unmoved from where he appears to have walked directly into the coffee table and tipped some handmade vase onto the floor. Tony’s stomach drops roller coaster quick. Steve is slack-jawed, his eyes wide. 

“What in the hell …” he says, almost a whisper. And Tony’s a little shocked, because that’s much closer than Steve usually gets to cursing. Yeah, he’s upset.

Peter has his face buried in the crook of Tony’s neck now, his body trembling intermittently with what Tony can only assume is nervous laughter that he’s trying to hold back. 

Then Barnes walks into the room, sees Tony and Peter intertwined, and doubles over with laughter.

“What?” Steve repeats.

Barnes finally gets his laughter under control. He straightens and wipes tears from his eyes. Then he claps Steve on one shoulder.

“Well you see, Stevie, when two men love each other very much …”

“I know what homosexuals are, Bucky,” Steve says, sharply. And it’s the way he says it that makes the hair on the back of Tony’s neck stand up. It’s not a slur, not really, but that’s not the way it feels.

“Homo. Sexuals?” Tony repeats, meeting Steve’s eyes and staring him down.

“Technically only one of us is a homosexual,” Peter interjects.

He turns his head so his voice isn’t muffled into Tony’s skin, but half of his face is still hidden. The half Tony can see, when he looks down, is a deep red. His breath is still coming in little huffs, and his face is scrunched up.

“You look a little flustered there, pal,” Barnes continues, speaking to Steve, and there’s a bite to his words, that Tony doesn’t quite understand. “I just didn’t want you to be confused. More than happy to help explain things if you like.”

Steve rips his eyes away from Tony to look at Bucky.

“Don’t be mean, Buck,” he says under his breath. “I’m just trying to understand.”

“Bullshit,” Barnes spits at him. 

“You know what …” Steve says, and he clenches his jaw along with the rest of his body. Then he’s shaking his head and leaving the room, footsteps thudding loudly as he goes.

“Oh, goddammit, Stevie, come on,” Barnes calls after him, and then he’s following him out of the room.

Well, Tony thinks, Steve didn’t punch him in the face or challenge him to pistols at dawn, so that actually went much better than he was expecting. Still on the counter, Peter grips him close and finally releases the laughter he’s been struggling with.

*

Peter wants to die. Captain America just caught him making out with his boyfriend. If 13-year-old Peter could even comprehend of such a thing, he would have begged to be consumed in flame rather than actually experience it.

And yet the ridiculousness of the whole thing makes it impossible for him to keep from giggling. God, the way Rogers had said the word homosexuals. It’s like it’s a name for one of the alien species they’ve encountered, and he just can’t comprehend it.

Peter takes a deep breath to try to control himself and dares a glance up at Tony, who’s looking down at him with his eyebrows bunched together.

“You doing ok there, Pete?” he asks. 

Peter nods, gulping. 

“Just need a moment.” 

“Does anyone know what’s got into Steve … Oh.”

Peter turns his body away from Tony to see Natasha paused in the entryway of the living room. 

“Boze Moi, you are both disinfecting every inch of that kitchen,” she finally says, but her eyes are crinkled in a smile.

“So we can acknowledge this is happening now?” Wanda asks, coming up behind Natasha. “Because pretending it wasn’t was getting a little exhausting.”

Peter sighs.

“Well, you weren’t trying very hard,” Peter tells her. “You already told half the team.” 

“You know I don’t believe in secrets, Pietro,” she says, flashing him a grin. 

Bruce and Sam follow behind the two women, and Peter grumbles a little as Tony disentangles himself and starts cracking more eggs into a bowl. It certainly does seem like they’re headed in the direction of another group breakfast, which means they’ll need more food.

Sam claps Peter on the back as he settles onto a stool by the counter.

“Good work, Spider Dude,” he says. “Seems like you managed an actual conversation instead of just dramatic pining from a distance. I wasn’t gonna say anything, but it was getting a little …”

“Pathetic,” Peter mumbles into his hands. “I know, I know.”

“Well I’m happy for you.”

Peter rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah. Please don’t let’s go on about it. I feel like I’ve dealt with enough mortifying situations this morning already.”

“Mortifying how?”

“Well before you all came in … The Captain sort of surprised us.”

“We should get him a bell,” Tony calls from over by the oven. “A really jangly one. He does not always use his super solider stealth for good.” 

“Ooh,” Sam says, eyes squinting, lips pursed. “That doesn’t seem like something he’ll deal well with. Should I go talk to him, you think?”

“No,” Peter sighs, rubbing his eyes violently with his palms. Despite not sleeping that night, they’re a little sleep crusted, and he definitely hasn’t had enough coffee for this. “It’s my mess. I’ll go talk to him.”

“Oh thank God,” Sam says. “Because introducing Cap to modern sexual mores is not my idea of a fun time.”

“Guess this is a ‘You break it, you buy it’ situation,” Peter says, punctuating the sentence with a little groan.

He slips off the counter, taking his coffee cup with him, and walks over to Tony, physically turning him away from the oven to give him a peck on the lips and force the mug into his hand. It feels good to be able do that so casually, now. So good that he leans in for another quick kiss, Tony’s mustache tickling as his lips tilt up in a smile.

“Don’t let Natasha steal my coffee,” he cautions very seriously. “If I don’t come back, mourn me properly. I died of embarrassment trying to explain the spectrum of sexuality to a 100-year-old virgin.”

“Just so we’re clear, I get the sweet, sweet Lego models in your will, yes?” Tony asks, a hint of mockery in his voice. 

“You know those go to Ned. You get my Apple I, to remind you of your golden youth.” 

“You’re hurtful when you’re sleep deprived.”

Peter sticks his tongue out at Tony, and then walks away, heading down the hallway toward Rogers’ room. He knocks on the door and waits for a couple minutes, but gets no reply. He figures Rogers is too polite to all-out ignore him, so he heads in the other direction, wondering if maybe he decided to take a walk outside to clear his head. He’s pondering where the Captain might decide to walk to when he turns a corner and … 

Steve has Bucky backed up against the wall, one hand fisted in his shirt, the other clenched in a fist, slammed against the wall above Bucky’s head and they’re … Kissing. They kiss the same way they fight. No give on either side, egging each other on, teeth clashing. As Peter stands there, mouth agape, Bucky’s hands move from his sides to grip Steve’s ass and pull him closer in a move that makes them both groan.

And Peter, well, Peter is only human, and that is America’s ass that Bucky is fondling. Without realizing he lets out a squeak that is part shock, part arousal. At the noise, the two men break apart, Steve spinning to look at Peter, eyes wide and panicked. His face, mysteriously starting with the tips of his ears, turns a bright vermillion. 

He bites his lip, flicks his eyes from Peter to Bucky a couple of times and then, achingly politely, says “Excuse me, please.” Before fast walking back in the direction of his own room.

When he turns the corner, Peter leans against the wall opposite Bucky and lets out a long, low whistle. Bucky’s grin is wide and infectious. He lets out a little sigh of contentment. 

“Well, that definitely was not what I was expecting,” Peter says.

“Yeah, you and me both,” Bucky replies.

When he speaks he’s still sort of breathless.

“And … What exactly was it that I just saw?”

“I’m wearing that boy down, Boss. I am going to wear him down.”

“Fuck yes, you are.”

And they just stand there for a moment, grinning like idiots. And Peter knows it’s probably not going to be an easy road for them, but he really does believe that Bucky is going to get his guy.

*

It’s past midnight that night before Tony hears a light knock on his bedroom door. He’s been running some simulations for the transporter before bed, dressed in just his sweat pants and his glasses, the kind that are just for reading and not the flashy smart glasses he usually sports. He only needs them when his eyes get really tired, but he doesn’t like wearing them. They make him feel old.

When he opens the door, Peter is there, sort of slumped over against the wall. He looks wiped. 

“You know you don’t have to knock, Pete,” Tony says. “It’s as much your room as mine.”

Peter doesn’t reply right away. He meanders into the middle of the room, scratches absently at his head, and then sort of collapses onto the bed, looking up at Tony with hazy, half-lidded eyes.

“Do you think we’re moving too fast?” he says.

Tony’s heart stutters in his chest. He had not been expecting a relationship talk tonight.

“What’s going on here, Peter?” he asks, struggling to keep his tone light. 

“I mean it,” Peter says, bending his head down and talking to the ground. “Is this … Is it too much too fast? Because I know I can be a lot, and it’s only been, like, a week, and I’ve already moved myself in …”

“Whoa, whoa,” Tony says, trying to pause the spiral Peter is descending. “Kid, you were moved in way before we ever became a thing.”

“But that’s my point, Tony,” he says, throwing his hands up into the air in a frustrated huff. “I didn’t even really ask, and we sleep next to each other every night, and aren’t we … Skipping a few steps?”

Tony’s throat hurts from the emotions he’s holding back. When he speaks he can tell it’s too clipped, too abrupt.

“You wanna step back? We can step back. We can go slow. If that’s what you want.”

“It’s not what _I_ want.”

“Then you’re gonna have to fill me in, because I’m very confused.”

“I want to know what _you_ want.” 

Tony pauses to take a few deep breaths in and out. He doesn’t really understand where this is coming from. He thought he and Peter were on the same page. He’d foolishly thought they were settled even though they haven’t really discussed the future in any way. He straightens his spine.

“All my cards on the table, kid?”

Peter looks up at him with those big, sad eyes and nods. Tony kneels down and insinuates himself between Peter’s legs so he can brace himself on the kid’s knees and look up into his face.

“I’m twenty years older than you, Pete, and we don’t exactly have the safest lifestyle. So I need you to know we can take this at as glacial a pace as you would like. But me? Some days I feel like I’m looking down the barrel of a gun, and I want every second of you I can get while I can get it. Every goddamn inch.”

“Oh …” And Peter exhales and just sags into Tony, wrapping his arms around his neck. “Same,” he mutters into Tony’s shirt collar. “Very much same.”

“Well, good,” Tony says, leaning back and brushing a lock of hair out of Peter’s eyes. “Now, you wanna tell me what’s really going on?”

“Shuri and I went over final tweaks for the regeneration cradle today.”

“Ah.”

“Soon I’m actually going to have to go through with this crazy idea …”

“Not crazy.”

“It’s a little crazy.”

“Yeah, well, so is flying around in a souped-up tin can, but it’s worked out pretty well for me so far.”

“We can’t all be Tony Stark,” Peter huffs.

“Yeah,” Tony says, giving Peter a kiss on the tip of his nose. “Some of us are significantly better.” 

“That’s not …”

“So instead of spiraling about Vision, you decided to spiral about something completely different instead?”

It’s a good thing, maybe, that their relationship is the thing he chose to focus on, Tony thinks. It means he feels at least a little secure if he’ll choose picking it apart as the thing to keep his mind off the real problems. Tony’s been known to do the same thing in times of crisis, except for him it’s usually the personal stuff he’s trying to avoid.

“I needed a distraction?” Peter says.

“Doesn’t sound like a particular fun detour.” 

“Not so much.”

“Just for the record, Pete,” he says lightly. “I’m a sure thing. That’s not something you ever have to question.”

Peter gives him a wry smile through the fringe of his hair.

“Maybe I should save these particular existential crises for Dr. Oyemi,” he says. 

“We can always talk,” Tony assures him, running his hands over Peter’s shoulders and arms. “Or …”

“Or?” Peter asks, raising an eyebrow at Tony in question.

Tony lets his hands slip down further so he can rub his thumbs beneath Peter’s t-shirt right above the waistband of his jeans.

“Or I can do my best to take your mind off things.”

Before Peter has time to respond, Tony is running his hands further up Peter’s torso and gently pushing him back onto the mattress. He licks a stripe along Peter’s stomach and then tugs gently with his teeth at the belt loop of his jeans.

The little huff of breath that Peter takes is encouragement enough for him to pop the button on his pants with his lips and tongue, then uses his teeth to pull down his zipper. Some days Tony is very grateful for the experience of his wayward youth.

“Holy shit,” Peter exhales.

Tony raises his head, to Peter’s whines of protest, and gives the kid a sly smile and wink before returning to his work. He meant what he said. Every second, every inch. He wants everything Peter Parker will give him.

*

It’s a few more days before Shuri declares the new regeneration cradle finished and they can start creating Vision’s new body. 

Peter has managed to beg enough vibranium from T’Challa to get the job done, so he sets up in the lab and starts the long, frankly pretty boring process of 3D printing a human body. Once the plans are inputted, and the machine set to do its job, there’s really not much left for Peter to do besides fret and pace.

He does a lot of fretting and pacing. He picks at the cuticles on his left hand until they bleed, and then switches hands. His stomach won’t stop fluttering. It’s strange. In a few hours, he’ll know for sure whether all his planning and scheming will pay off or not. He really doesn’t want to see the look on Wanda’s face if it doesn’t.

Wanda herself comes down a couple hours into the process mostly just to sit and watch the tissue being knitted together to form Vision’s familiar red face. Eventually, she grows tired of Peter’s pacing and grabs him by the hand, pulling him down into a chair beside her. In front of them, the cradle makes a gentle whirring noise as it does its work – bones and muscles and sinew.

“Do you not think it will work?” she asks when he still can’t stop twitching. H realizes he’s been bouncing his leg and jostling her arm, and makes himself stop.

“No, Wands, of course I do,” Peter says, taking a little comfort in the way she intertwines their fingers. “I swear I wouldn’t be doing this if I hadn’t covered all my bases, it’s just …”

“Just what?”

“I owe you everything,” he says, and he can’t quite manage to look at her when he says it, instead focusing on the unusual twist of a muscle in Vision’s jaw as it comes into focus. “Everything good in my life right now, I wouldn’t have any of it without you. I’d still be stuck in that other timeline, banging my head against a wall, trying to figure out how to do fucking magic.”

“You would have found a way,” she says, gently tilting his chin up so that they are looking at one another. “Pietro, you would have found a way. You’re too obstinate not to. But for the record, I’m glad it was me and you. I wouldn’t have wanted to fight that battle with anyone but you.” 

“I don’t want to let you down,” he says. “There’s a chance that even if everything goes perfectly, it just won’t take. I don’t …”

“Then we try again,” and her eyes flash red and fierce when she says it. It’s a look that makes him believe her, or want to at least. “It’s the one thing we’ve got going for us, Pietro. You and I, we don’t always have the good luck.”

Peter grins wryly at that. She’s not wrong. The Parker bad luck is legendary.

“We should be dead, probably several times over, but you and I are stubborn motherfuckers. And that’s why we get the job done, right?” she says. 

“That’s right.”

“Then if this doesn’t work we try again. We try something else. Promise me.”

“I promise,” Peter says. “I’m gonna bang my head against this particular wall until I break it.”

“Then I’m not worried,” she says with a purposefully nonchalant shrug.

And maybe Peter doesn’t quite believer her – her red-rimmed eyes and sallow complexion give immediate lie to the statement – but it’s enough that she can say it with a straight face, that she wants to believe it against any odds that Peter might place in front of her.

They’re still holding hands and watching the cradle do its work – it’s hypnotic when you really pay attention – when Tony, Bruce and Shuri enter the lab. 

“Don’t fog up the glass of my cradle, Spider Boy,” Shuri said. “I didn’t work on that for weeks just for you to get your greasy fingerprints all over it.”

Peter puts his hands up in defense to prove he isn’t touching anything and then backs slowly away from the cradle. 

“Fine, fine,” he says. “It’s all yours.” 

Shuri tsks at him and waves him away, bringing up a holoscreen so she can examine the vitals the machine is spitting out. 

“I checked over your code, Peter,” Bruce says. “It looks good to me. Clean work, very impressive.” 

“Thank you, Dr. Banner. I really appreciate the second set of eyes.”

“Third!” Tony pipes in.

“Third,” Peter agrees. “I appreciate fresh eyes, anyway.”

“Not a problem,” the man says. “You know, I’ve been thinking about the potential applications for amnesia patients if this trial is successful ...” 

And Tony must see how that “if,” fully justified though it may be, makes Peter cringe.

“Hey, kid, you wanna help me run diagnostics on everything before go time?”

“Sure thing,” Peter says, and heads over to where Tony is standing by a bank of computers, running through a list of system checks that exists only in his own mind. 

Peter, too, takes a sort of comfort in checking and re-checking everything while most of his team members wander down to the lab. They try to act casual, and Peter wouldn’t really put it past them all to have carefully timed their arrivals.

When Bucky walks in, Rogers is right behind him, and Peter swears he sees the Captain’s hand positioned low on Bucky’s back, but he slips it away before they join the little knot of people standing off from the regeneration cradle.

Bucky leaves Steve behind and makes his way over to Wanda, pulling her in for a long hug that ends with her face buried in his chest and his chin resting on the crown of her head.

Finally, though, all the checks are done, and Shuri calls him over to tell him that tissue regeneration is at 100 percent.

Peter looks over at Wanda. 

“Guess the only missing piece is the stone,” he says.

She nods, swallowing thickly, and pulls on a silver chain around her neck that dips down beneath her blouse. At the end of the chain is an old-fashioned looking locket, which Wanda flips open to reveal a faint yellow glow.

Peter cautiously opens the pressurized lid of the cradle, and Wanda summons her power so that she can pinch the little yellow stone between her thumb and forefinger without ever really touching it. Then she walks over and peers down into Vision’s unmoving face. She doesn’t cry, but he can see her chin tremble in an effort to hold back her emotions as she leans forward and very carefully places the stone on his forehead, pressing just a bit until it is absorbed into the new tissue.

She follows that motion with a brush of her lips directly to the stone. She whispers something that he can’t make out, possibly in Russian, and then slowly pulls back and gives Peter a firm nod.

“Let’s do this,” she says, and he admires how little her voice wavers.

“Alright,” Peter says, grasping her hand to give it one final squeeze before closing the cradle lid. “Uploading Vision code now.” 

He nods to Tony who does that with just a few flicks of his fingers across the keyboard.

Once he has confirmation, Peter hooks the cradle up to their power source.

“Administering 21.7 megajules in 3, 2, 1 …” 

Pressing the appropriate button sequence creates a very impressive flash of energy that seems to hover and spread over the surface of the cradle for a couple of minutes before dissipating in a shower of sparks.

Peter can hear his own harsh breathing loud in the echo chamber of his own eardrums as he moves toward the cradle’s lid, but Wanda’s hand stops his before he can open it.

“Let me?” she asks, eyes filled with a desperate brand of hope.

He nods and steps back.

He can see her hands shaking as she undoes the locking mechanism and lifts the lid. 

Peter holds his breath. A part of him wants to close his eyes, but he can’t look away. A billow of white smoke flows from the chamber. Then through that thick fog, he sees it. One red hand grasping the edge of the cradle.

A collective gasp flows through the room like a wave as Vision sits up from the cradle. His usually stoic face twists down as he scans the room, his eyes settling on the woman beside him.

“Wanda?” he breathes out.

The choked sob that Wanda releases at her name reverberates through the room. She throws herself at him. 

“Vis,” she cries. “Oh, Vis.” 

“My love, you did so well,” he said, stroking her hair.

Peter takes a few steps back while they cling and murmur to each other. They have the attention of the entire room. He turns on his heel and walks, as quietly as he can, toward the exit.

He walks through corridors and up stairwells, barely noticing where he’s going other than up until he reaches one of the little emergency roof access doors. Really, it’s only for maintenance people, but he throws the door open anyway, and when he steps out into the night, he takes the first deep breath he’s been able to properly manage all day. The moon is just a fingernail sliver in the sky, the stars unnaturally bright. Peter focuses on pulling deep breaths into his lungs.

He walks over to the edge of the roof and flops down, flinging his legs over the ledge so that they dangle beneath him. He honestly can’t believe he pulled that off. Just like that, the task that has been hanging around his neck for all these months slips away. His promise is fulfilled. Vision is back, and he remembers Wanda.

Peter stares out into the night and he feels proud, and relieved and also, shameful as it may be, bereft. There’s no more overarching task to inform his choices. No road map to follow, not even one of his own devising. It’s all been daydreams before this, but now it’s terrifyingly real. _What now?_  Peter thinks. _What now?_

*

Tony is in the middle of giving Vision the android equivalent of a physical, just to make sure everything’s in working order, when he realizes Peter isn’t anywhere in the room. To be fair, everything is a little chaotic. Wanda refuses to release Vision’s hand, as though she can’t really believe he’s there. And, yeah, Tony can relate, but it’s making it a bit of a tangle to get all of his sensors connected. And then the rest of the team is milling around. Thor’s voice is booming out at a grating volume, Clint whooping over the phone to Coulson to let him know, Sam and Bucky and Steve are crowding in close.

He motions Bruce over through the throng and whispers into his ear to take over for him. He doesn’t have any serious concerns, anyway. Vision seems to be functioning as well as they ever expected.

“Everything ok, Tone?” Bruce asks.

“Not really sure yet, Big Guy,” Tony says, and then he’s maneuvering his way through the throng, slapping Thor on the back, giving Nat a smile and a nod, and then he’s out, and the noise dies away. 

He wanders around the compound checking his room, Peter’s room, some of the secondary labs, but it’s a ghost town. _If I were a Spider-Man where would I go?_ Tony thinks. He won’t be up by the cave. Even Peter will have realized that it’s too dark to go for a hike if one doesn’t want to give one’s boyfriend a heart attack. So probably not there, but he likes to survey things from high up, especially if he’s got strong emotions on the boil. The past few days have been very emotional. 

So maybe he’s wound up on the roof? Tony follows the building’s stairwells as far up as they will go, and sure enough, one of the maintenance doors is propped open with a rock.

When Tony steps out into the night, sure enough, Peter is there – a small figure in a red hoodie, barely illuminated by the city’s glow from below and a spray of stars from above, dangling his feet over the edge of the building. The hoodie, pulled up over his head, reminds Tony so much of the first time he saw Peter, in those dumb YouTube videos – swinging off buildings and lifting fucking busses – that it is physically painful. It hasn’t actually been all that long since those days, and yet it really has been in experiences and, for Peter at least, in actual years. He takes a minute just to stare at the curve of the kid’s back and wonder what he could be thinking about.

Peter turns before he’s taken more than one step toward him, no doubt alerted to Tony’s presence by that super hearing. The kid gives him a watery smile that, well, it’s not great, but it at least makes Tony feel like his presence isn’t an unwanted intrusion.

“Watcha doing all the way up here, kid?” Tony asks as he settles down on the roof’s edge next to Peter, their shoulders are touching, and Tony brings his right arm around Peter’s back to stroke down the line of his spine.

“I just … I can’t believe we actually pulled it off,” Peter says, quietly, his eyes focused out over the city. “Got everyone back. I don’t think I ever believed it, no matter how many times I promised Wands and Bucky.”

“And now?”

“And now I should be happy. I am happy. But also I don’t know what to do with myself without having that as a driving force.”

He turns to Tony with those big eyes, sparkling in the starlight.

“What do we do now?”

Well, Tony’s actually got quite a few ideas about that. There’s a ring in a red velvet box in Tony’s bedside table drawer that Peter doesn’t know about yet. Tony forged it from the nanites inside the reactor Peter had returned to him the first time he got some alone time in the lab. It’ll shrink or grow to fit Peter’s finger.

But that ring won’t be Peter’s for a while, as much as Tony wants to put it on his finger and make sure he never takes it off. There’s still so many barriers to cross before that. For one, they have to figure out a way to tell May about their relationship. That is going to be one hell of a fight. And then the media is going to go absolutely batshit once they realize that, yes, Iron Man and Spider-Man are dating. He hates so much that he’s going to expose Peter to that madness.

But beyond the one thing that Tony wants most of all, there are all the other little things he wants, and Peter seems to need to hear some of them. 

“Let’s go home, Pete,” he says. “We should go home now.”

 He holds his breath after he says it, like a little boy riding through a tunnel on a car trip, making a wish. He thinks Peter wants this, too. But he could have so many things now that he’s free from the burden of undoing Thanos’ work. He could travel the world. He could go to college. He could decide he wants to stay in Wakanda …

“And where’s home?” Peter asks with a bitter laugh, raising his hands to the sky in question. 

“New York,” Tony says quickly. Maybe if he paints a good enough picture, Peter will choose this path. “Home is New York. So we should go home, find a place in the city. Patrol by night, make crazy science together by day. Spend weekends up at the compound helping train those terrifying recruits that Fury’s brought in. Save the world when it needs saving. I mean, maybe it isn’t fulfilling a personal vendetta against the universe like you’ve been doing for the last five years, but it sounds like a pretty sweet life to me. Provided you’ll be there.”

He falters a little with that last sentence because Peter’s looking in his eyes intently now, and the scrutiny makes Tony breathless. 

“Just like that?” he asks.

“Yeah, kid, just like that.”

“Can we get a place in Queens?” Peter asks, a smile spreading across his face.

“Jesus, kid, you aren’t even going to give me midtown, are you? I’m going to have to slum it in the boroughs for you.”

Peter widens his eyes incrementally. He knows what he’s doing. 

“Fine,” Tony says eventually. “Queens it is.” 

Peter smiles up at him, then turns his face back up to the sky, pondering, considering.

“Let’s go home, Pete,” Tony whispers to him, one last time.

It’s a plea, and a prayer, and a promise. Peter leans his head against Tony’s shoulder, sighing in a way that releases something in Tony’s chest he didn’t even know was trapped there.

“Yeah,” Peter says into the dark. “Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll I can't believe this thing is finally finished. 
> 
> I apologize if anyone finds the addition of the West Coast Avengers here at the end confusing, but it's my favorite current comic, and Marvel just canceled it. There are so many endings happening right now, and apparently I can only properly process them by writing.
> 
> A sincere thanks to everyone who has been reading and commenting. This is the first fic I have ever posted, and this little community has just been so lovely and supportive. It made me very happy to give these two a happy ending, and I hope you enjoy it as well.


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